The aspect ratio on my ripped footage is different

sasuke2468 · Post by **sasuke2468** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 1:54 am

I made an amv and after rendering i noticed that the aspect ratio on my evangelion clips where much smaller then my fma or karas clips, how can i make it so all my footage is the same aspect ratio?

Purge · Post by **Purge** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:09 am

??????

what program are you using and did the clips have the correct aspect ration before the render.

sasuke2468 · Post by **sasuke2468** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:25 am

I'm useing vegas video and they wheren't changed during rendering, they're different from eachother before I noticed while watching the eva dvd that the ratio waws smaller even when i pop'd it in my comp and watched it through wmp

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:10 am

Which Eva series is this? If it is the US Manga Ent. D&R or EoE DVDs then you might be noticing the widescreen letterboxing used on the release. If you have the Japanese R2 Movie DVDs, then they are anamorphic 16:9 like the Karas DVDs and the Fullmetal Alchemist Movie DVD (which aren't out yet).

If this is the NGE TV series you are using then there should be no problems since it is also 4:3 like the Fullmetal Alchemist TV series. Well, then you would have problems with the Karas footage since it is supposed to be 16:9 anamorphic widescreen.

I'll need a full list of your sources to properly give you advice on how to fix your problem. Here are the possible sources from the available R1 DVDs:

Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series (ADV): 4:3
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and Rebirth (Manga Ent.): 16:9 letterbox widescreen
Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion (Manga Ent.): 16:9 letterbox widescreen
Fullmetal Alchemist TV series (Funimation): 4:3
Karas OAV series (Manga Ent.): 16:9 anamorphic widescreen

Japanese R2 DVDs (if different):

Neon Genesis Evangelion: Movies (Japan R2): 16:9 anamorphic widescreen
Fullmetal Alchemist: Shanbara wo Iku Mono (Japan R2): 16:9 anamorphic widescreen

(If you need an explanation of some of these terms, click here for letterboxing, here for anamorphic widescreen, and here for a detailed technical explanation of how to identify widescreen footage and how to handle widescreen footage when using DVDs.)

Crash course in Aspect Ratios 101

I'm going to make an assumption that you are using the Eva movies as footage since the TV series wouldn't look "smaller" compared to the rest. Now, the question I have to ask, is this video going to be widescreen (16:9) or standard (4:3)?

This is important because since you are using Karas as a source, assuming that this is from the R1 DVDs, it is 16:9 anamorphic widescreen footage and to make it look correct in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio video will entail cropping (cutting the sides off to make it 4:3) or letterboxing it (adding black bars to the top and bottom to make it 4:3). Also, the Eva movies are 16:9 letterboxed widescreen so technically it is 4:3 and you can leave it alone, but if you want to get rid of the letterboxes (the black bars), you will also need to crop the video (top and bottom to lose the LBs and the sides to make it 4:3, and its gonna make it look somewhat crappy after resizing). The Fullmetal Alchemist footage then will look a bit out of place because it will be fullscreen.

If you decide to make it 16:9 widescreen, the Karas footage is OK. The Eva footage will need to be trimmed of the letterboxes (crop top and bottom about 60 pixels each, then resized) and the Fullmetal Alchemist footage is also gonna have to lose some of the image top and bottom to make it 16:9 without stretching the image (same amount as the Eva footage, then resized).

You are now asking why do I have to do all of this, isn't all the footage the same resolution of 720 x 480? Yes, but now this part is pretty important, 720 x 480 is not 4:3 aspect ratio nor is it 16:9 aspect ratio. Correct 4:3 video is 640 x 480 and correct 16:9 is 848 x 480. The explanation is very technical, and it can get even more technical.

I'll leave you with a link with some pics showing why you'll probably need to resize footage to 640 x 480 or something similar:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... hp?t=65156

I'm working on a Mini Illustrated Guide to Aspect Ratios to reference until EADFAG or whatever it eventually gets called is updated.

sasuke2468 · Post by **sasuke2468** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:27 pm

Wow thank you Willen. Yes the eva footage was End of Evangelion 16:( LETterbox widescreen and i used the Karas series that jus came out in like may or april... andthe fma tv series.. dang i shoulda left it out.... I also used the chrno crusade tv series but that's the same as fma. And this amv is being made for the anime expo contest >.> funny i git this problem a week before i have to hav it in the mail... XD So they're rules say its got to be in 720 x 480 so that means 16:9 is the way i go righ ... so my karas is fine, but that also means i hav to crop my eva... yea... it does look crappy... and then crop fma and chrno up a bit to reach 720 x 480 did i understand all that correctly?

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 3:37 am

Just make sure that your project settings are 16:9 if you are going that route. Also, I'm not too sure how Anime Expo will handle 16:9 widescreen material. I know most conventions are only setup for 4:3 footage so you will probably have to contact the AMV coordinator to find out what their recommendation is. I think many people will add some letterboxes to the AMVs they submit if they know the equipment being used cannot handle 16:9 footage correctly.

Ironically, it might be better for you to leave the Eva footage alone at 720 x 480. Then add 30 pixels of black top and bottom to the Karas footage (that will make it 720 x 540) and resize it to 720 x 480. For the rest of the footage, I would crop 60 pixels off the top and the bottom, then add 60 pixels of black to replace what was cut off to make the final footage 720 x 480. You would have to treat the video as 4:3 in your project settings and when you encode MPEG-2 (if that is how you are going to submit).

Personally, I would do everything as 16:9 widescreen, taking off 60 pixels top and bottom of everything except the Karas footage. Then resize everything to 720 x 480. Create a new project with 16:9 widescreen properties and edit away. Export it when finished as Uncompressed RGB, Huffyuv, or Lagarith. Using AviSynth, add 30 pixels to the top and the bottom of your video to make it 720 x 540, then resize to 720 x 480. Load the AVS file into TMPGEnc or your favorite MPEG-2 encoder as a 4:3 video and convert away. This will ensure that your video will be played back without any stretching, although you will have those black bars and a shorter-height video. Then, for a XviD distro copy, you can load the same video file, except this time you resize it with AviSynth to either 848 x 480 (huge!), 640 x 360*, or split the difference and go with 720 x 400 (the video will be a tiny bit stretched). (*Or, if you want a really good encode, resize to 640 x 360 then crop 4 pixels top and bottom and encode as 640 x 352.)

Keeper of Hellfire · Post by **Keeper of Hellfire** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 4:05 am

I wonder why one resolution for 16:9 footage with square pixels is always overlooked. It's 768x423, being exact 16:9 and both dimensions multiples of 16.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 5:14 am

Keeper of Hellfire wrote:I wonder why one resolution for 16:9 footage with square pixels is always overlooked. It's 768x432, being exact 16:9 and both dimensions multiples of 16.

Fixed, and I suppose it would require a bit more resizing than just 848x480 or 720x400 which is just resizing one dimension from 720x480 footage. Although 768x432 seems to work better with PAL edited footage.

sasuke2468 · Post by **sasuke2468** » Wed Jun 14, 2006 8:10 pm

Awsome thank you! i'ma go do that now and if i run into any probs i'll let u kno XD

MarlinBeta · Post by **MarlinBeta** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 7:19 pm

I'm having a similar problem with an AMV I'm working on that was inspired by the AMV Hell series. Basically, I'm splicing together several different anime sources of 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios into a single AMV, just like sasuke2468. However, I'm stuck using Windows Movie Maker because that's all I have (as far as my computer RAM and wallet can handle at least). Am I going to have to use AviSynth to correct the problem? I can't find a letterbox setting or anything of the sort in Windows Movie Maker and most of the other "how to make AMVs" don't have information on how to maximize the performance of Movie Maker.