Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

The tablet's 15:9 screen matches none of the popular movie/TV formats (4:3, 16:9, 2,35:1,...).
How do you prefer watching video content on your tablet? I've included all the choices I've experimented with in the past, if I missed something, please choose "other" and post.

You might have different preferences depending on the aspect ration of the source material: 4:3 vs. any widescreen format (16:9 and wider), this is why I chose to make a "2 in 1" poll that allows you to vote differently for widescreen and for 4:3.

(Oh, yes, and: Please choose what you'd prefer if you had the choice, not what you actually have available for whatever reason.)

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

Source. No ifs and or buts. Pan and scan, zooming, cropping, stretching, whatever, they're all about as evil as it can get.

Given a choice of the source format, though, 16:9 works nicely.

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

Well, tablet's screen is 16:10 FYI :)

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

15:9

Widescreen computer monitors are 16:10 (though they're starting to trend towards 16:9).

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

Since you pretty much have to reencode for the tablet, I crop 16:9 videos to 15:9 when reencoding.

I tend to avoid 4:3 videos on the tablet, since they are a very poor fit for the screen.

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

Don't you mind the black bars that sometimes take more than 50% of the screen?

I found (after a lot of trial and error) that I enjoy videos most when they're full screen. The tablet's screen is small enough, so why not use all of it?
I also found that you can safely crop most widescreen productions to 16:9 without loosing anything important. They seem to shoot films so that they look good on a 16:9 tv screen. On a screen as small as the tablet's, the difference between 16:9 and 15:9 is only a few pixels... So I cut off the left and right part and use 15:9, full screen.

4:3 is different. You cannot easily cut off top and bottom to make it fit our screens, this will always cut people's faces in close-ups. Also, stretching the image is too extreme, it doesn't look good. But a combination of both works. If I cut off only a little to achieve 14:9 it is hardly more than what TV productions calculate for overscan. The remaining difference - 14:9 to 15:9 - can be achieved by a little stretching..... still noticable, but by far not as bad as the 4:3=>15:9 strech, and very acceptable.

I find it very interesting to see in this poll that a lot of people don't seem to bother and simply take the source material without changes. I would have bet it was different. ;)

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

Cropping? :shudder: If you're not going to watch it in the original aspect ratio you don't deserve to watch it. . . .

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

No. I will crop to action safe, so as to devote the bits to where they matter, but I won't change the aspect ratio.

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

Cropping doesn't mean to change the aspect ratio - I don't do this on widescreen material. I just remove the parts on the left&right, but the aspect ratio stays intact.

About "deserving to watch": Wouldn't I do this, I wouldn't, in fact, watch the film at all because it's so small that I better only encode the soundtrack and listen to it as audio file. ;)

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

is mencoder's best friend.

Add black bars back in if you like, but please don't encode with them.

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

Oh, BTW:.. Maybe I should start another thread for this, but I might give it a try here:

As I said, while with widescreen sources I only use cropping, I found the only acceptable method to get 4:3 to fullscreen is cropping and streching. I don't like the stretching either, but I like black borders even less.

Now: My TV set does the same, but uses some clever algorithm that leaves the center of the picture almost untouched while stretching the area close to the border (left&right) most. This is a very acceptable compromise for most shows on TV.

Is there any tool (command line tool preferred, as it should work as part of existing scripts) that would let me apply the same effect when encoding for the N800? I looked around but didn't really find anything for GNU/Linux.

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

When I have to do sophisticated video processing on Linux, I use AviSynth in Wine. It should be easy to make a AviSynth script that'll perform the smart stretching you want.

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

I don't know what people have against black bars, but cropping, pan'n'scan, distortion, etc. all of that ******** is a million times worse.

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

Exactly. "I just don't like them" is not a reason; it's a rationalization of some weakass argument.

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

I personally think the black borders are horrible. I would do anything to get rid of them. Anything, even at the expense of distortion, is better than any black borders. See this thread, 4 black borders decreases screen realestate by as much as 37%, http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...t=24349&page=3, thread #30. With decrease screen realestate, you sacrifice readability. Again, just like anything in life, personal preference takes precedent. You bet, WorldTV99 is working to give user a choice, black borders or distortion :-) .

For me, again, I cannot stand any black borders, it is ugly and annoying and distraction. That is just me.



bun

Re: Which aspect ratio do you prefer for video content?
 

The 4-border situation is bad; it results from the source mat'l being 16:9 (or so) but re-encoded as 4:3 with borders top and bottom. Then this 4:3 image is played back on a 15:9 screen which gives borders left and right. In this case, the correct behavior is to crop to 16:9, recovering the original aspect ratio. This problem occurs during streaming because there's no way for the stream's size to change dynamically with content, so a stream is either 4:3 or 16:9, and content of the other ratio gets scaled and padded to fit.

Personally, I prefer to leave it in source ratio, and deal with any boxes. But I can see stretching 16:9 content ~7% to fill the screen, if the borders really annoy you; the deviation is minimal, and may actually compensate for perspective if you're viewing above or below axis. Cropping (or the level of stretching needed to fit 4:3) seems inexcusable to me, even if you don't crop past action-safe. There's image information there, why throw it out just because it's non-essential? That said, it's your tablet, so by all means watch video as you like.