[MPlayer-users] Embedding video aspect in mpeg1

[Heimdall Midgard]

While playing around with encoding to VCD-compliant mpeg1, I
discovered a quirk with the aspect options used to embed the
video's width-to-height ratio.

Both "-lavcopts aspect=4/3" and "-mpegopts vaspect=4/3"
appear to produce video with the correct aspect when played
by mplayer, but *NOT* when played by other free software
players, namely VLC and Xine.

VLC and Xine apparently interpret the aspect as something
closer to 16/9 (squished). The command I use is:

mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc \
-lavcopts acodec=mp2:abitrate=224:\
vcodec=mpeg1video:vbitrate=1150:vrc_buf_size=327:\
vrc_minrate=1150:vrc_maxrate=1150 \
-of mpeg -mpegopts format=xvcd:vaspect=4/3 \
-vf pullup,softskip,scale=352:240,harddup \
-af resample=44100 -ofps 24000/1001 \
-o output.mpeg input.avi

I know there's a note in the man page for "-lavcopts
aspect=" that "only MPlayer will play these files correctly,
other players will display them with wrong aspect." Does
this apply to "-mpegopts vaspect=" as well?

Is there a way to embed the aspect so that it can be read
correctly by other software players. VLC and Xine can play
the VCDs and DVDs I rented or ripped with the correct
aspect, so I know that the two players can read the aspect
of some mpeg streams properly.

I am using MPlayer dev-CVS-051107-08:26-4.0.3.

--
Albert Einstein: Phantasie ist wichtiger als Wissen, denn Wissen ist begrenzt.