Video losing ratio when playing

Allen

I have old 8mm videos that are I think 3/4 ratio but when playing spreads out to wide.
Happens in both Smugmug style gallery and lightbox.

Happens to 1st three in this gallery. Last video keeps ratio. (passworded gallery)
https://www.photosbyat.com/All-Family/Family-Videos/Al-and-Lois-Videos/New-Hampshire/i-WnLr6zt/A

Edit: found other galleries with videos doing the same thing.
This is really bad.
Please fix.

leftquark

The video played back in SmugMug as a 16:9. Curious to see if this really was an issue on our end, I opened the original video in QuickTime and it also played as a 16:9. It looks like there might be a pixel density issue in the metadata of the original file that causes it to playback stretched. According to the metadata in the file, it's supposed to play back as it does. There's a lot of interesting reading on this topic here: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/aspect-ratios.html#Pixelaspectratio

Can you double check the metadata of the original files?

ziggy53

Allen, "MediaInfo" has free versions for Linux, Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android and iOS.
Please install MediaInfo and run it against the suspect video files on your system. MediaInfo has the ability to save the results of it's analysis of your video file as a text file. Please copy those results from the text file and post them in this thread.

Brief tutorial here:

Using MediaInfo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivy9ckSX1M0

"MediaInfo is an invaluable tool for troubleshooting issues with video editing source files. For more information, visit our Community Forum at Muvipix.com"

Allen

My problem is I can't find the original video files. Only ones I can get would be the converted ones, MP4, downloaded from Smug.
We think they are from a borrowed Sony video camera. This was back in 1995.

Allen

I downloaded 1st video. MP4
Opened with MPEG Streamclip.
Exported to Quick Time ... MOV
Set to 640x480 (4:3)
Uploaded and shows as 4:3.

New version of all four videos just uploaded now show as 4:3. Bad ones set to "hide".
Tomorrow I'll have to find others that are bad. Saw some but don't remember where.

(why are all above lines double spaced? Only the last line should be.)

Allen

Looking farther.
Neighboring gallery has only 2 of 15 (No. 4 & 15) that are 4:3, rest are 16:9.
Another gallery 2 of 8 good. (1 & 8)
So this looks like it runs fairly deep.

ziggy53

Generally this problem occurs when setting up the encoder during the transfer process, from the original video file from the camcorder.

The basis for the problem is that DVDs can be made from either 640x480 or 720x480 resolutions, but DVD standards allow for either standard analog TV aspect ratio (4:3), or for 16:9 "Widescreen". the difference is that the Widescreen DVDs use non-square pixels while the standard DVDs use square pixels. Digitally pixels are pixels, but the encoding simply sets an aspect ratio byte which tells the encoder's intent for either 4:3 or 19:9 aspect ratio, rather like standard optics vs an anamorphic optics system. (Anamorphic optics squish the horizontal field-of-view, which has to be expanded for viewing.)

If this was a problem generated by SmugMug's ingest system, then we would see tons of other instances. Since this problem seems to be isolated to your account, I'm afraid the problem must have occurred sometime prior to SmugMug's system.

Anyway, it sounds like you are handling the situation pretty well, except that I suggest if the files stored on SmugMug are MP4, then you should probably use MP4 as your target output from MPEG Streamclip. Using Quick Time/MOV for output is causing your system to re-compress the video, and then the SmugMug system may re-compress back to MP4 files. This double re-compression may cause visible artifacts as a result.

If you use MP4 in and MP4 out (especially if you use the same frame rate, etc. as the files coming from SmugMug), MPEG Streamclip may be smart enough to just copy the file contents except for changing the aspect ratio byte. If that's the case, and I don't know MPEG Streamclip enough to know if that's how it would work, but if it doesn't resample/recompress the files, then neither should SmugMug when you send the files back for storage and display.

If this is confusing, it may be time to find a local expert in video to help. Many colleges/universities have people with this knowledge, as well as most TV broadcast stations.

By all means, keep the video files you are downloading from SmugMug unless you can find your original "master" copies. The SmugMug files may be your best new originals, except for the aspect ratio issue, of course.

Allen

Ha, just finished two galleries. But I'll go back and redo to MP4's as a test.
Edit: looks like it ran thru the same creating as before so might be re-compressing.

Will be using this preset for "Export to MP4". Everything is set the same as I used for "Export to Quicktime" MOV with 4:3 selected.