Any Movie Fit Your Screen PERFECTLY - use Cropping

[BigPuppy]

The poll we set here (see above) belongs to the very common situation when we have movies of a different screen
format (4x3, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 2x1, etc.) while we have few screens, and usually it's not the one that fits the movie well.

Black stripes on a screen is an annoying problem on a TV or on a 17'' laptop, but
wasting of the very-very needed screen space on portable video players is a big problem.

Cropping allows to solve the problem (as well as many other), but it has numerous bugs now...

Do you think fixing of these problems deserves to be in the highest priority list?

Also feel free to post more detailed opinion below - I will...

[BigPuppy]

I was happy to find this soft because it has two features I need:
- Volume Control
- Cropping

Volume Control is OK, but couple of needed volume features are missed.

Cropping has so many features I never-ever dreamed of, but simple essential feature is still missing...

I'll give my complete list if anybody want to take these enhancements into the active development.

Here is the big problem: Cropping is still very buggy.

After two days of hard work I found workarounds to get Cropping works,
but with simple video transformations or "Copy Audio" setting only.

I was able to make:
- Two-Pass cropped video with the "Copy Audio"
- Simple Bitrate-based AVI files with cropped picture and transformed audio.

BUT
All my cropped 3-Pass and 2-Pass AVI H.264 files with transformed LAME MP3 audio got the audio with extremely slow speed (like 10%) or no-audio.
Situation on BS.Player looks even worse than on VLC, that should not happaned with mp3. This tell us that mp3 audio output somehow get out of standard...

I also succeeded with the simple manual crop setting, but three fancy modes aren't ready for real work:
- Extensions > Digital Media Players > Zune
- Crop
- Cropping

Thanks anyway - this soft has tremendous potential!

Final testing were done with the latest x32 0.6.1 build 4102

[ladycoder]

I consider converting WS to what amounts to static Pan and Scan a horrible idea, but I do not own an Ipod or the like. Especially since you cannot even be sure of having the important part of a scene in the cropped area.

Almost every movie is WS, and eventually TV will probably be, too. I haven't seen a UK TV show with 4:3 aspect ratio in a long time.

[BigPuppy]

Dear ladycoder,

Thanks for sharing your opinion, but
I think you completely missed the point.

Nobody restricted you from keeping originals!
You can have 101 or 212 copies of your lovely original, unchanged...

The point is: What else do you really need plus to the original...

No doubt, if you never ever "own an Ipod or the like" - it's your respectable choice - so don't even try that question on you, try it on you friend or son or grand mom, who can easily kill her/his eyes losing half of that small (already) screen.

PS
The funny thing is that my last 20 years I live in the dreamworld where
everybody assure me: "No more FullScreen, it's gone, kaput, exiled"....

And what I see in the real life: People don't like WideScreen laptops because they aren't good for reading (even if the commercial says they are wide, it's far from WideScreen - just take your measuring tape).

WideScreen laptops are really bad for word processing, not good for management, not good at all for 3D design...
They are good for nothing but soap and wide life shows...

To my surprise people still buy less that 10% of WideScreen portable
DVD players, no more than 5% of WideScreen car DVD players...

No more than 0.5% of all the flash portables...

And how about YouTube?
How about ... everything.

For over 30 years the movie industry cheat and rape us with the
format you can enjoy only when you are already occupied with your popcorn

[ladycoder]

I have a 13" tv with a picture tube and am extremely near-sighted. When I say I don't have an Ipod, I mean I cannot afford one. I never expect to have a widescreen TV or laptop.


But I still prefer to see the whole picture as shot by the director, even if it only takes up part of the screen.

Youtube is not known for its video quality, so I can see how letter-boxed video would make it worse.

I always crop and/or resize manually, including loading it in Virtual Dub first to count the right number of lines.

But, as I said before, UK TV is almost always 16:9 ( I live in North America), and with digital TV becoming a law or something soon, I assume there will be more.

Lots of widescreen movies are sold as pan and scan dvds, and people complain.

I don't know about highest priority, but ask Stanley to add it to the Ipod or Zune extensions.

[BigPuppy]

I like your English, young lady...
Nothing wrong to put "young" in front of "Lady", I hope
And you properly use all the modern words, so you aren't old, definitely not.

It's not my first language, and I never had time to polish it (and nobody will ever correct you in NY where I live now), but I have a taste for a good one...

Many good portables are around $100 now, and I'll be happy to send you (personal message) a link to a good internet deal that floats from time to time.

People always complain about something, so take a look what hardware they actually buy.
Whatever it is, it's better to utilize the small screen completely.

My main point is that after two years of public development it's finally
time to draw a line, stop adding features, properly implement what was started and fix ALL the existing bugs.

I think we ALL here have to get the QA behavior NOW, not the developer-playboy ardor.

It's time to produce a RELIABLE working PRODUCT instead of very promising alpha version 0.6...

I expressed this with more details here:
viewtopic.php?p=13999#13999

Probably, I'll have to create another pull to make it happened, but I want to get to know local people little bit better first...

Let's help Stanley to get the recognition he deserved!
There is only one way to make it happened:
Draw the line, fix all the bugs (yes, it's boring sometimes) and deliver version 1.0 STABLE.

These Cropping-affiliated bugs I consider to be of a high-priority, cause not only the Cropping don't work at the full scale, but many attempts to use Cropping leads to almost complete destruction of the audio part, e.g cropping with the two-path conversion and LAME. That should be fixed ASAP

[ladycoder]

Not, young, no, and thanks, I have enough to deal with the standalone dvd players I encode for that are connected to that 13 incher.

I had a 2" black and white TV in college, though

I usually encode the video and then the audio, but I do not use H264, so I cannot comment on the problems you are having.

There will always be something that doesn't work completely in a program that is continuous changing.

I tend to add options manually, because it is easier sometimes, and if they are in the wrong order, I just use Command line Mencoder.

There have been one or two things that I asked about last year; I have no idea if they were fixed since the last stable version.


It's up to Stanley how long he wants to develop his creation. Consider how irritating it is to use a program that had it's final version written 4 years ago.

[BigPuppy]

I was happy to find this soft because it has two features I need:
- Volume Control
- Cropping

Volume Control is OK, but couple of needed volume features are missed.

Cropping has so many features I never-ever dreamed of, but simple essential feature is still missing...

I'll give my complete list if anybody want to take these enhancements into the active development.

Here is the big problem: Cropping is still very buggy.

After two days of hard work I found workarounds to get Cropping works,
but with simple video transformations or "Copy Audio" setting only.

I was able to make:
- Two-Pass cropped video with the "Copy Audio"
- Simple Bitrate-based AVI files with cropped picture and transformed audio.

BUT
All my cropped 3-Pass and 2-Pass AVI H.264 files with transformed LAME MP3 audio got the audio with extremely slow speed (like 10%), or no-audio on BS Player

Yes, situation on BS Player looks even worse than on VLC Player, that should not happaned with mp3. This tell us that mp3 audio output somehow get out of standard...

I also succeeded with the simple manual crop setting, but three fancy modes aren't ready for real work:
- Extensions > Digital Media Players > Zune
- Crop
- Cropping

Thanks anyway - this soft has tremendous potential!

Final testing were done with the latest x32 0.6.1 build 4102

[SirAuron]

Actually I think preserving as much information as possible from videos is the most important thing. But as you know I would also like to see a perfectly stable working copy of MediaCoder.

Did you try build 4045 btw? It works pretty stable for me and I can use it for cropping my 2-pass h264/nero aac encodes just fine.

[refaelilara]

Hi BigPuppy...

I am searching this topic and also I give my Suggestion and problem related my Computer's screen.

I also watch lots of movie in my PC.And sometimes my screen is not completely show that movie.In both side of my screen some darkness are always there.Sometimes its show the full screen means use all the Pixels .

I heard about the cropping.So I want to know that if cropping is resolve my problem and give the solution.

If you have information regarding then post more detailed here.

Thanks in advance.