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Handbreak Iron Man

d21mike

d21mike

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jul 11, 2007
3,320
356
Torrance, CA
I am new to Handbreak and AppleTV.

When I play the Iron Man DVD on my 52" LCD it shows black bars (pretty large) on top and bottom (not all of my DVD's do this). I could not find a setting on my DVD Player to remove them (I am using a XBOX 360 to play the DVD).

When I use Handbreak to rip it and then played the M4V File on my AppleTV it had the same black bars. In the end I use the ZOOM Feature on my TV to play the movie in full screen. Normally I don't like ZOOM but it was "ok" for this viewing.

I was hoping that Handbreak would have a feature to remove the blackbars so that it would play in full screen. I left the CROP Setting to AUTO.

Anybody else convert Iron Man and what did you do. I am using the GUI Interface on Windows.

Most of my other DVD's seem to convert and play in full screen. Maybe they play the same with the DVD as well so Handbreak is really not doing anything to change it.
 
Tallest Skil said:
If Iron Man is 2.39:1 and your TV is 16:9, there's not really anything you can do about this.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I understand what you mean but I could not find anything on the cover to say. This is a new movie. I am a little suprised they don't release it to match the new Widescreen TV's.

On the cover it says:

THIS FILM IS PRESENTED IN "WIDESCREEN" FORMAT. THE BLACK BARS ON THE TOP AND BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN ARE NORMAL.

Has anybody purchased this on iTunes and if so does it play with the black bars like the DVD does. Also, could you tell me what "size" in bytes it is.

I converted it with Handbreak AppleTV Preset at Avg Bit Rate = 2000.

My M4V size is 2.4gb. When I was using 2500 Bit Rate my files were about 400kb larger but could not tell that much of a difference in quality. I was just wondering if the movies sold on iTunes were about the same size or what. I have not yet purchased a movie on iTunes.
 
Tallest Skil said:
If Iron Man is 2.39:1 and your TV is 16:9, there's not really anything you can do about this.
Click to expand...

Nor is there anything you *should* do about this. The movie doesn't happen to have the same aspect ratio as your television. There's nothing wrong.

Anything you do to 'fill' your screen will either distort the picture or cut some of it off. Personally, I find either of those two options much worse than the non-problem you are looking to solve.

A.
 
d21mike said:
Thanks. I understand what you mean but I could not find anything on the cover to say. This is a new movie. I am a little suprised they don't release it to match the new Widescreen TV's.
Click to expand...

:D
LOL! Films are made for the cinema screens, not your TV in mind. It is upto the director usually what ratio to use, and most action movies are 2.35:1
 
I answered part of my question. This size on iTunes is 1.38GB. I looked at the trailer and it looks about the same as my ripped movie (black bars on top and bottom). I assume the movie would look the same.

With that said, it appears for me to rip the same movie quality would require a setting of about 1000 (instead of the 2000 or 2500). Someone else said you should use about 70% instead of a real number.

Do most people here feel that you should rip at a much higher rate then what is normally purchased via iTunes? Is the iTunes quality not good enough for most or do you just want the best that you can get and not that concerned about disk pace. Also, with only 160gb drive (max) on the AppleTV do you mostly use stream mode. At a rate of about 2.5 - 3gb per movie I could only Sync about 50 movies with not much music and pictures added.

Since I am just beginning and it takes a long time to rip the movies I really appreciate the input from all of you here.

Thanks.
 
You should use whatever format looks good to you. iTunes is not a good example of good quality.

If you have a lot of space, use 2000 or 2500. I use 850 because I mostly watch the movies on my iPhone, and they look perfect at this setting.

Most computer screens are 16:10, so hardly any movie will be real full screen. Most new TV shows are 16:9 though, so they come really close.
 
NeoMayhem said:
You should use whatever format looks good to you. iTunes is not a good example of good quality.

If you have a lot of space, use 2000 or 2500. I use 850 because I mostly watch the movies on my iPhone, and they look perfect at this setting.

Most computer screens are 16:10, so hardly any movie will be real full screen. Most new TV shows are 16:9 though, so they come really close.
Click to expand...

I will mostly watch the movies via AppleTV. I would have thought iTunes would sell the best for that format. However, after thinking about it maybe they are targeting the iPod users since that format can work for both iPod and AppleTV.
 
d21mike said:
I have actually been down this road before but it was a number of years ago. Thanks for the refresh.
Click to expand...

So does this mean you no longer want to butcher Jon Favreau's movie? I certainly hope so. He shot the movie at a particular aspect ratio and framed each shot for that aspect ration for a reason. The aspect ratio of the movie is part of the story telling.

Regards,
Michael
 
Everyone remember one thing when comparing a dvd encode via HB to an iTunes store "HD" download:

Apple is not using a SD dvd as its source, they are likely getting a raw vido source from the studios and compressing it.

When you use HB on a dvd, you are taking an already compressed 480p source (the dvd) and recompressing it to h.264. HB cannot make something out of nothing.

Your results for the iron man dvd are spot on and should not be changed.
 
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