Am 30.10.2014 um 23:26 schrieb Carl Hetherington: Oh, of course it would have to be scaled, the problem right now is that I can not put it into a DCP 'properly', unscaled WITH the proper aspect ratio correction. The 'no scale' option was brought up (I think in this list) so that one could use any size footage without upscaling, just by padding top/bottom/sides with black. Now that works for real square pixel footage - but not for 16:9/anamorphic, because there is no option to turn it into square pixels without upscaling - the only option to get it into 16:9 AR is to apply a scale to 16:9 - but that also blows it up to 1920*1080 in a flat container. I wouldn't care for this specific video, as I could turn it into what I wanted with the 16:9 option - but then I tried to find out wether DCP-o-matic ommited a 16:9 flag in the file, loaded it into media players, tested DCP-o-matic with a now 'normal' 16:9 DVD VOB file - and found the same issue with it. So, essentially, we can not create a flat container from a 16:9 VOB with ONLY the Pixel AR corrected to 1024/768 and padded with black on all sides. And that's what I thought is a missing link if we want to make sense to that 'no scale' option. You are of course right that from a signal processing perspective, there is not much difference between an anamorphic->square pixel scale, and an upscale to 1920/1080. But I think the no-scale option has some good uses, so it should work with non-square pixels as well, because so much content is still 16:9/non-square. Funny thing - yesterday I talked to a fellow projectionist and he told me he was still using DVD-o-matic. I told him he should make the switch, there is nothing to worry, and he said he would. Then he asked me why the hell would DVD-o-matic always 'stretch' content vertically when he first imports it. It seemed annoying to him, although not much work to correct. I didn't think about that much until I imported that AVI file today and noticed essentially the same behaviour. Obviously he converts a lot of 16:9 anamorphic stuff and always has to correct the AR first. Admittedly, I don't remember how DVD-o-matic arranged the scaling options back then. I remember you reorganized them at some point because they became too confusing and partly redundant. In fact that file I converted today is of somewhat mediocre quality, so my first attempt was to create a DCP with it centered on the screen, surrounded by black padding. Then I noticed there is no way in DCP-o-matic to do this, because 16:9 currently is the only option to adjust AR properly, and that goes with a full frame blow-up. I guess I'm thinking of people trying to convert 16:9 DV-tape or 16:9 DVD stuff without wanting to blow it up to full screen because it wouldn't hold the quality. And yes, immediately I thought the same - maybe the 'default-scale-to' pref is not useful. In fact I thought it would be better for the users to first see the content after import exactly like it is in the preview window. Unscaled, unstretched, but with the native AR applied. Then start to apply stretch/scale factors as needed. Of course, this would be nearly the same as a 'default-scale-to' pref set to 'no scale' - just that now it wouldn't deal properly with non-square pixels. Anyway, this is not urgent, we better think about this for a while. We don't want to mix up the scaling options every other version number ;-) As weird as it is, this is one of the great features in DCP-o-matic, and at the same time it's a real curse... - Carsten

Am 31.10.2014 um 00:36 schrieb Carl Hetherington: Yes, bit of a problem, how many 'creative' options do we want to add to the software - putting a picture into a black frame like this technically is letterboxing/pillarboxing, but not in a strict technical sense. Normally one would do that in an external editor. BTW - this is not only a problem with SD footage like from DVDs or DV-video - there are also HD-formats with non-square pixels, e.g. HD-DV/HDV is 1440/1080, and I just took a short test with my Sony digital camera set to MP4 format - it says '1080' in the camera menu, but in fact creates a 1440/1080 file with non-square pixels. DCP-o-matic states it is 1,33:1 and previews it squeezed. Now again, I can 'just' get it right in DCP-o-matic using the 16:9 option, but that is the only way to do it. Also - in this case I KNOW it is 16:9 and non-square pixels - what if people do not know it and/or the preview image doesn't give a clear visual indication? Personally I would love to have individual H/V scale sliders, but I don't think this is suitable for the general public ;-) I guess it would be best to make DCP-o-matic use an existing AR-flag. Then - checkbox or not..., in content tab, or prefs? I guess I would want to have this handled in content specific options, so a 'per file' setting. At some point it could become important with bitmap files as well, although they are usually easier to correct externally. I have seen quite a few files with non-square pixels WITHOUT a proper flag, but I have hardly ever seen a file with a 16:9 flag set wrongly, so I think the risc is small this will cause real harm. And I think most people would like to have DCP-o-matic show these common content types - DV/HDV, and 16:9 DVD with the correct aspect ratio after import immediately. Like my fellow projectionist does ;-) - Carsten

Am 10.11.2014 um 10:46 schrieb Carl Hetherington: Ah, okay, it still considers incoming pixels as square, but just chooses the 16:9 scaling when there is a flag in the file. Not what I initially thought it should be handled like, but I guess it's ok to handle it that way. BTW - the localized (german) version now has a broken content info display - it goes away when I choose english language. Do I have to adjust this in the localization files, or is this something that you can fix in the code? Because from the nature of your changes, that should not have had any impact?

Am 10.11.2014 um 14:35 schrieb Carl Hetherington: I guess I had something in my mind like keeping the aspect ratio from the pixel AR flag always present when dealing with the file, or, always convert to square pixels first, then let the user choose a scaling. But as I have no idea of DCP-o-matics internal handling of this, this may not be feasible. The way you did it solves 16:9 default scaling, and that should be it for now, as this is the most common need to deal with non-square pixels. Yes, I think it's a good idea to get rid of the default scale pref. The best way to deal with this by default is to - handle the correct aspect ratio of the content file when scaling - scale it full screen according to DCI specs to either container hight or width Whoever then needs different options, has to set them manually. Of course, there is no easy way to deal with this when we have letterboxed content like 1.85 or 2.39 from BluRay or DVD. Wondering wether these files actually carry a 'letterboxed' or 'visible content in lines x-y' indicator? That would be handy. - Carsten

Am 10.11.2014 um 15:41 schrieb Carl Hetherington: I'm loosing my ground here ;-) I guess what I thought of initially was a more universal approach to non-square pixels. E.g. if we'd had (rare...) a file with 2x anamorphic stretch, like classic scope. They way you are doing it now is that you need an existing/fitting 16:9 scale factor to deal with the non-square pixels, so currently DCP-o-matic can only deal with square or 16:9 non-square. If e.g. you'd come across a file with 1:2 pixel aspect ratio, you couldn't deal with it, because there is no suitable scale factor in DCP-o-matic - every other non-square pixel AR would need it's own scale preset in order to handle it. If you'd have a way to correct the incoming file with it's flagged AR to square pixels, you would not need to have a dedicated preset scale factor to adjust it. Is that clearer? I know that currently this is of little practical relevance, that's why I offer to pull out until someone comes across a file which DCP-o-matic can't handle properly ;-) Hmm, maybe this could be it - Instead of 'Scale to 16:9', or in addition to it, offer a 'Scale to content AR' option? Then that could be any pixel AR, not just non-square 16:9, and make this the default behaviour. - Carsten