[FFmpeg-user] Ffmpeg lying about video width and height

[Bouke / Videotoolshed]

> On 13 Jun 2023, at 17:03, Rodolfo Medina <rodolfo.medina at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Kieran O Leary <kieran.o.leary at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> This is PAL video with a pixel aspect ratio that tells a player to display
>> the image in widescreen. This transformation turns 720x576 stored pixels
>> into 1024x576 displayed pixels.
>> So there are 720x576 of actual pixel data present in the file, but the
>> metadata in the file is telling players to display 1024 pixels wide.
>> So Ffmpeg is telling the truth, and mediainfo is telling the truth.
>> Mediainfo also has the source pixel width in the output as well with a
>> value of 720.
> 
> 
> Thanks.  Now I wish to scale this video.  Normally I do so with something like:

Why would you like to scale the video? Quality won’t improve, and it is low res already.

Your concern would be to crop, since this is SD video where the edges were never supposed to show 
(CRT’s were overscanned, every shot is framed to accommodate for that, so if you don’t crop you have wrong framing / see mics dipping into the top etcetera.)
Then, it’s probably interlaced, you should worry about that.

So, crop, and set display aspect ratio to 16:9.
(IMHO)

Bouke