Pillarbox 1.85:1 movie on 2.39:1 screen?

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Behodar

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#198701 19-Jul-2016 17:00

Hi everyone,

I'm in the middle of setting up a home theatre and have a 2.39:1 screen, but a normal 1.78:1 (1920x1080) projector. When playing a 2.39:1 movie all is well; the projection fits the screen because the "overflow" is all black and therefore isn't visible.

However, when I play a 1.85:1 movie, the top and bottom of the picture spill outside the edges of the screen. Does anyone know whether there is a way to tell one of the playback apps to shrink down the content so that it has black bars on all four sides? This will make it fit the screen, with pillarboxing on either side. This means that the effective resolution will only be about 1486x803, but that's a compromise that I'm willing to accept (it won't look any worse than 2.39 content does now).

I've tried using the "aspect ratio" and "crop" features in VLC, but have only managed to distort the video. I'm using OS X and have tried to make it actually output at 1920x800 but it doesn't appear in Sys Prefs - although even if I were successful there's still a chance that the projector would then stretch it back out to 1.78:1 anyway.

I'm possibly going about this all wrong, but short of re-encoding everything with pillarboxes or physically moving the projector closer to the screen I can't find any way of pillarboxing a 1.85:1 movie.

Any suggestions? :)

RunningMan

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#1595149 19-Jul-2016 17:08

Bit messy, but shrink the VLC window rather than playing fullscreen and centre it on the projector display... Can you hide the window frame with VLC when not in full screen?

Behodar

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#1595150 19-Jul-2016 17:09

Hmm, I hadn't considered that. I'll certainly take a look :)

Behodar

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#1595228 19-Jul-2016 19:12

No luck, by the look of it. QuickTime Player lets you hide the frame/controls but still shows the menu bar, and VLC doesn't seem to even let you hide the frame :(

Behodar

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#1606549 8-Aug-2016 19:56

An update: This is doable in VLC after all, although it's fairly clunky.

In VLC preferences, Video tab, disable "Window decorations"
Set the desktop background to black
Set the menu bar and dock to automatically hide
Open the 1.85:1 video and manually resize/position the window so that it's in 2.39:1 aspect in the middle of the screen.

That's not ideal, but it's better than nothing!

Thanks RunningMan for the tip; pity I didn't find the "window decorations" option at the time.

Masterpiece

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#1607232 9-Aug-2016 20:05

Doing this with an external scalar is the best, but of course comes with a cost.

The Lumagen Radiance series have automatic detection to reshape aspects to suit, also work really well with anamorphic lens.

Does you PJ have a zoom function? this is the cheap and cheerful method to deal with 2.35~2.40 screen aspects.

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Behodar

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#1607249 9-Aug-2016 20:39

Unfortunately it can't zoom to that level. Around 75% of my collection is 2.39:1 so it's probably not a huge amount of work to mess with VLC in the meantime. A proper lens would be nice, but that's not free :)

I've done this whole project on the cheap so I'm happy to sacrifice a little convenience. Getting a 2.6 metre system up and running for a little under $1900 isn't too bad really - certainly cheaper than going to Noel's and buying the biggest TV!

Behodar

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#1615956 22-Aug-2016 17:58

Just a quick update: I found that when using a proper Blu-ray player, I can set both the player and projector to 4:3 and that also does the trick. The player letterboxes the 1.85:1 content inside a 4:3 frame, resulting in an effective resolution of 1440x778. Apply a slight zoom and it's easy to get it to the same height as scope content, with no noticeable quality loss.

It's a slight pain to change the settings depending on the movie aspect, but it's much better than manually positioning windows!

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Masterpiece

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#1616073 22-Aug-2016 21:47

In your first setup description you at least have the 2.35 filling and blanked areas off the screen.
This method you are destroying the image for both formats. For me I'd still search for a better solution.

I have to ask, why did you choose 2.35 aspect?

Personally if you asked for advice early on pre setup I would of advised the difficulty of the 2.35 aspect setup. Really you have two main methods, the cheapest is to use a projector with zoom capability based upon the incoming signal aspect the projector zooms automatically, the costly and arguably better way is use a scaler and an anamorphic lens. In this method you stretch all video aspects to fill 1.78 then the lens reshapes to 2.35. The lumagen scaler has non linear stretch that makes the center area of the image less distorted with 1.78 filling 2.35 aspects. DVDo can also scale for this purpose, but I don't think is has NLS.

If anyone isn't going to use either of these methods I'd advise a 1.78 screen.

For your setup, because of the screen being the dominant factor I'd consider selling the PJ and getting one with an auto zoom. There is plenty 1080p models that do this that are quite cheap now(even cheaper 2nd hand), the main thing to look at within the specs is one that suits your throw/screen.

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kiwijunglist

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#1616371 23-Aug-2016 15:41

Didn't read entire thread, but I recommend using mpc-hc instead. While video is playing fullscreen press the '1' on the numpad a couple of times until there is sufficient border, if you press 1 too many times you can press 9 to decrease the border. mpc-hc is free and can be setup to show a superior picture quality to VLC. you can adjust the picture by pressing all the numpad buttons, ie 4+6 = horizontal stretch, 2+8 = vertical stretch.

obviously zooming out and adding black bars on the computer does reduce the quality a bit, as your effective resolution is dropped. The alternative is to adjust the zoom on the projector when watching different aspect ratio movies. This method will eliminate the drop in effective resolution.

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Behodar

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#1616389 23-Aug-2016 16:01

Unfortunately it doesn't seem that anyone's ported MPC-HC to OS X. However, I'm happy enough with what I have now; most of my movies are on Blu-ray and I now have both aspects working there, therefore making software solutions more-or-less moot. There are a couple of outliers (some older films are 1.37:1, 1.66:1 or 2.20:1, and Jurassic World is 2.00:1) and I may need to deal with these on a case-by-case basis, but those are comparatively few.

Yes, the effective resolution is dropped when watching 1.85:1 movies, but I'm not sitting close enough to the screen to see the difference anyway.

All is well :)

jaidevp

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#1616397 23-Aug-2016 16:10

Yep a external scaler is ideal, but come at some cost.

I have a Radiance Mini 3D that I've been trying to sell. Let me know if you are keen.

kiwijunglist

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#1616431 23-Aug-2016 17:07

try while fullscreen in vlc pressing alt+o and alt+shift+o (or whatever the apple equivalent is). You might have to press 'o' first to change o original size then toggle zoom using those keyboard shortchuts.

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Behodar

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#1616432 23-Aug-2016 17:10

kiwijunglist:

try while fullscreen in vlc pressing alt+o and alt+shift+o (or whatever the apple equivalent is). You might have to press 'o' first to change o original size then toggle zoom using those keyboard shortchuts.

Thanks! "O", then "Shift-Option-O" makes it smaller in fullscreen. Exactly what the VLC forums said wasn't possible.

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#1616435 23-Aug-2016 17:12

Sweet.

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