2013-08-13, 17:22
Good Afternoon XBMC Developers,
Often there is no-reciprocity between the Aspect Ratio a movie is presented in (the real aspect ratio of the movie if it were in a letterbox frame) and the Display Aspect Ratio. The latter seems to be the one XBMC consistently shows the user as AR media flag, which misrepresents the real aspect ratio besides misleading the user with regards to the real proportions of what they are watching.
If one defines the aspect ratio manually in a local NFO file, some improvement takes place in the 'AR flag department', although still not what it should be. Why? For Ben-Hur, for instance, a film presented in a 2.76 Aspect Ratio, XBMC will show a 16:9 flag (Display Aspect Ratio that can be read from the media info); manually changing the NFO to an aspect of 2.76 (or indeed anything over 2.35) results in XBMC showing a persistent 21:9 flag, which is 2.33 AR and therefore as wrong and useless as having a 16:9 flag. In any case, all editing efforts are lost since XBMC will reinstate the 16:9 flag as soon as the movie is played again.
It is utterly important to be able to see a flag that tells the real aspect ratio intended for the movies we watch; it is a useful information that tells about the real proportions of what I am watching, and precious when it comes to differentiate multiple versions of the same movie, such as restored versions, or re-releases, that usually present variations in the AR amongst them. If that information is not available in the media file, then one should be able to set it manually and expect it to STAY like that, otherwise it is useless and misleads the user into believing something it is not simply because there is conflicting information being display on the screen at the same time: aspect ratio flag versus the image I am watching simply do not match (please see image below).
There has been a bit of noise about this issue in some threads such as here (1), here (2) and here(3) but no attempts to fix this has been manifested, that I am aware of. I'd like to raise attention on this matter amongst developers and hopefully get an adequate response.
Thanks in advance,
CF
Ben-Hur Blu-Ray release 2.76 Real Aspect Ratio presented by XBMC with an Aspect Ratio Flag (display) 16:9 :
Often there is no-reciprocity between the Aspect Ratio a movie is presented in (the real aspect ratio of the movie if it were in a letterbox frame) and the Display Aspect Ratio. The latter seems to be the one XBMC consistently shows the user as AR media flag, which misrepresents the real aspect ratio besides misleading the user with regards to the real proportions of what they are watching.
If one defines the aspect ratio manually in a local NFO file, some improvement takes place in the 'AR flag department', although still not what it should be. Why? For Ben-Hur, for instance, a film presented in a 2.76 Aspect Ratio, XBMC will show a 16:9 flag (Display Aspect Ratio that can be read from the media info); manually changing the NFO to an aspect of 2.76 (or indeed anything over 2.35) results in XBMC showing a persistent 21:9 flag, which is 2.33 AR and therefore as wrong and useless as having a 16:9 flag. In any case, all editing efforts are lost since XBMC will reinstate the 16:9 flag as soon as the movie is played again.
It is utterly important to be able to see a flag that tells the real aspect ratio intended for the movies we watch; it is a useful information that tells about the real proportions of what I am watching, and precious when it comes to differentiate multiple versions of the same movie, such as restored versions, or re-releases, that usually present variations in the AR amongst them. If that information is not available in the media file, then one should be able to set it manually and expect it to STAY like that, otherwise it is useless and misleads the user into believing something it is not simply because there is conflicting information being display on the screen at the same time: aspect ratio flag versus the image I am watching simply do not match (please see image below).
There has been a bit of noise about this issue in some threads such as here (1), here (2) and here(3) but no attempts to fix this has been manifested, that I am aware of. I'd like to raise attention on this matter amongst developers and hopefully get an adequate response.
Thanks in advance,
CF
Ben-Hur Blu-Ray release 2.76 Real Aspect Ratio presented by XBMC with an Aspect Ratio Flag (display) 16:9 :