[MPlayer-users] Widescreen Question (To scale or not scale)

[Jorge Fábregas]

On Sunday 07 January 2007 3:28 pm, Nico Sabbi wrote:
> the best way to optimize quality is: crop all black bands,

Hello Nico.  I have a couple of questions here...   I haven't seen any 
widescreen DVD on my computer that had black bands (top & down bars).  Are 
there any DVD's out there with these bars on the actual video?

I'm learning to encode etc...I'm kind of a newbie here but I know the reason 
behind the black bars when you play them on TV (lower resolution)...but I'm 
now wondering..why would they author a DVD with the black bars on them?

> avoid rescaling 

OK

> and embed the modified aspect ratio in the avi header (automatic)

I have cropped the black bars on videos I have downloaded and I have noticed 
that the mencoder takes care of the modified aspect ratio...so is it that we 
only need to specify aspect ratio when you don't crop or rescale? I remember 
when I first encoded a widescreen DVD..when I played it back it look horrible 
(compressed horizontally...). I didn't know it wasn't until playback that it 
was stretched..but then I learned something on the header of the file must 
tell the player the aspect ratio....

All the best,
Jorge