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They cropped it to fill 16:9 screens, as they think modern audiences expect that. Check the options, see if you can select original aspect ratio. BR / DVD often has viewing options, especially on restored older programming. Streaming services sometimes do too.
It should be in the disc menu settings if present. It's a long shot - try the viewing-angle controls via the remote. And/or check the specs on the back of the retail box. It should list the aspect ratio(s) along with any extra features. Or use a ripping tool, to see if there are extra video tracks. Finally, complain to the producers that you cannot find the original-aspect-ratio feature on the release.
Already at stage two. My dad doesn’t have a player, so I’ve graduated from lugging mine back and forth to rips. Further minor irritant is my dad’s TV won’t play dts audio from a rip. At least I can fix that by reprocessing the audio with ffmpeg.
To add to the stack. Finally tracked down a copy of Ghost in the Shell from Japan without the horrid English dub, and my dad said he found the visial style too ugly to handle for a whole movie. I half see where he’s coming from. As much as I love the movie, I never liked the more Takahashi-looking parts of it.
Sometimes we get the RIP the studios give us. There are people peeved out there about popular tv shows that got quick n dirty pan and scan conversions, despite important things getting cropped out. Buffy fans were especially irate.
I mean, this is a business. It’s not cheap to restore 20-30 hours of footage and then produce a 10 disc Blu-ray set. They need to make that money back.
Likewise, if that’s what it takes to get more people to watch it, then that’s what it takes.
BRs have plenty of space, and adding a disc doesn't cost much. It actually takes more work to pan/scan/crop rather than just center the 4:3 original. After scanning & restoration of course.
It seems to me they can have it all ways:
1. 16:9 crop (they do this one anyway)
2. 4:3 original (almost no extra work to include this)
3. widest effort without vertical cropping. Use all available overshoot for left/right extension. (almost no extra work) I'd prefer this one for Buffy watches.
4. 16:9 without cropping. Use available overshoot, then use AI to fill in any missing width. This option isn't practical yet, but may be soon.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 22, 2024, 10:12 AM
Originally Posted by subego
@Lam,
How are the Nanoleafs? I have a friend who needs smart lighting and I’m only familiar with Hue.
Hue still seems to be the gold standard, but you're paying gold prices. Nanoleafs have been flawless so far, though the raw lumen output seems slightly down vs. a normal good LED bulb. I had smart outlets in our front room turning on two lamps. Converted those to Nanoleaf bulbs and the room seems a bit dim now. Everywhere else they're good. Imported to Home with the QR code without issue, incorporated into Scenes and everything nicely.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 22, 2024, 10:17 AM
Originally Posted by subego
Going widescreen only for this particular documentary saves 33% on:
1) Scanner time
2) Materials
3) Warehousing
For how many potential buyers will the crop be a dealbreaker? Like, 2%?
Top Gun: Maverick is Cinemascope for most of the movie but switches to 16:9 for the flight scenes (watching via Paramount+). I imagine when viewed on a regular HDTV screen, it's a cool effect going from letterboxed at the beginning of the movie to BAM full screen with the airplanes. But since my theater screen is already cinemascope ratio, I get full screen with the regular scenes and then once they start flying I see airplanes appearing on the walls above and below my screen. Possibly a remnant of being shot for IMAX, too? Home theater problems .
Going widescreen only for this particular documentary saves 33% on:
1) Scanner time
2) Materials
3) Warehousing
For how many potential buyers will the crop be a dealbreaker? Like, 2%?
1) The scanner time shouldn't be affected - they should scan the entire film negative, and apply any cropping afterwards. They're creating a digital master, in case the negatives are lost or degrade further.
2) The materials (raw BR discs, some paper for the case) are minimal expenses. Slightly higher, yes, especially if they run a million copies. But small percentage-wise.
3) Storing the million retail copies will take a bit more space, but again, it's a percentage bump more than an absolute bump. And if they're selling a million, they won't stay in the warehouse long.
I don't know how many people will object about aspect ratio. The loudest minority gets the most attention, but it could be your 2% guess.
Note that on Buffy, it hasn't gotten a BR release. It got a quickie HD conversion for syndication, without all the effort to match filters. ie - night-from-day shots often weren't refiltered right, and they were careless with the cropping/pan/scan. Some production items (boom mic, crew member, etc) ended up visible from using the overshoot, and no one fixed it in post.
I was adding titles to some home-made VHS stuff. iMovie will let you import any video you want, but - which it does NOT say anywhere while you’re doing it - it automatically crops the top/bottom of 4:3 video to make it fit 16:9. So the video I shot decades ago, paying close attention to framing, got cropped, and lost a whole lot of the stuff I wanted to capture. Now I need to redo those videos. Grrr.
iMovie does have an option to keep the 4:3 aspect ratio, but you have to tell it to do so. Folks, I still have and use a 4:3 VGA monitor… And is the default of 16:9 just because people actually watch movies on their iPhones? “But it’s got an HD screen!!!” Yeah, but aren’t movies why you bought that 102” TV at home? Sheesh.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 24, 2024, 12:01 PM
Enshittification of the internet marches on. Websites are now capturing the CTRL-F command and redirecting it to their own search instead of letting me use the built-in browser search.
In continuing Blu-ray ripping shenanigans, Blu-ray subtitles are in Presentation Graphics Stream (PGS) format. As denoted by the title, it’s not a text format.
My dad’s TV can’t natively display them, so I either need to burn in the PGS subtitles by transcoding the rip, or extract the PGS, OCR it into a .sbt file, and then graft it into the rip.
Can’t simply let a Blu-ray player handle it because region-lock.
Perhaps a region-free player? If those are too expensive vs basic players, remember: there are only 3 BR regions. So a maximum of 3 locked players will cover every disc. Two if you skip Region C (mostly mainland Asia).
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 25, 2024, 09:50 AM
Originally Posted by subego
Default should be “same as source”, no?
Project gets created before you import media, and ratio gets set at project creation, right? Or does the project change its ratio based on the first media imported?
Project gets created before you import media, and ratio gets set at project creation, right? Or does the project change its ratio based on the first media imported?
I don’t know honestly. Been years since I’ve used it. Premiere does the latter.
Edit: specifically, it goes off the first item that gets put on the timeline. There are default settings in case that first item isn’t a video file.
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Last edited by subego; Jan 25, 2024 at 03:45 PM.
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Perhaps a region-free player? If those are too expensive vs basic players, remember: there are only 3 BR regions. So a maximum of 3 locked players will cover every disc. Two if you skip Region C (mostly mainland Asia).
I’m ultimately happier with rips versus players. I was just trying to pre-address the suggestion that instead of jumping through all these hoops to get subtitles going, I could just slap it in a player and go.
Tested one of the transcodes for compatibility issues on my dad’s TV. Works fine, but I noticed for the first time the codec they used to master this is flaming garbage. My iMac display has been hiding it from me.
For giggles, I’m throwing some AI image enhancement at it.
Also realized it was a mistake to crop the pillarbox since I’m burning in subtitles. That reduces them from 1920 to 1440 across.
In the course of trying to try a couple of new meds for my insomnia, I discovered the following...
You know those drug commercials that end with words like “If you can’t afford Newpillica, Astra-Zenica may be able to help”? What those refer to are various coupon and reimbursement plans the various drug companies run to make their new drugs theoretically affordable. Sounds ok, right?
So, it turns out, those plans are great if you’re on a private health insurance plan, or have no insurance at all. But, if you’re on any form of government health plan (Medicare, for example) Astra-Zenica will most definitely not help you. The reimbursement plans specifically are not available to anyone on Medicare. I assume this would also include Medicaid, Tri-Care, etc. but I dunno.
The shit part of this is that, even under Medicare, these new meds are stoopid expensive. The two insomnia meds my doc wanted me to try were going to cost $400/mo. going through either my prescription plan or GoodRX. Obviously, I did not accept the meds.
It's everything. Everyone in the family got HomePod Minis for Christmas, once I get enough bulbs we're going all HomeKit and bye bye Alexa.
Even though I’m not sold on Apple Music, I picked one up today for my dad.
Ironically, it’s the terrestrial radio integration that sold me. If all goes well, tomorrow my dad will be able to say “Siri, play [classical radio station] on [name of AirPlay 2 speaker]”.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Jan 29, 2024, 09:35 AM
I didn't know that was a thing - do they use Tune-In or I Heart Radio?
My daughter (6) is loving having her own "Hey Siri" in her room. She listens to bedtime story podcasts, but occasionally branches out. The other night we could hear something playing in her room so I checked the Home app - it was an Apple News feature, something about "He was tried for execution once, now..." So I went ahead and remotely switched it back to her storytime podcast. I check a few minutes later and she was listening to Fox News. I asked her about it later, and after she finished Apple News, Siri offered her several news sources, which included Fox News. And to a 6yo, Fox News sounds delightful. I would love to hear about what the foxes are up to.
For anyone interested, here’s a list of “true names” I dug up for various classical stations.
WFMT Classical Music - Chicago
Classical WQXR - New York City
Classical KUSC - Los Angeles
WCPE - Raleigh
90.9 WGUC - Cincinnati
Your Classical NPR - Minneapolis
NPR Music WUOL Louisville - Louisville
99.5 WCRB - Boston
WDAV Classical - Charlotte
K-BACH 89.5 FM - Phoenix
BBC Radio 3 - United Kingdom
Ancient FM - Ontario
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Last edited by subego; Jan 29, 2024 at 02:49 PM.
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On actual radios, you may encounter those stations at different channel numbers. Other areas often rebroadcast a more famous station. It saves them having to maintain their own local library, or employ a DJ.
If you want to go old school, Chicago has a few 50KW AM stations. At night you can directly tune in from thousands of miles away. Back when there was less EM clutter you could pick this shit up in Hawaii.
Edit: oh, I forgot. Because of the tall buildings, good luck getting reception in Chicago.
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Last edited by subego; Jan 29, 2024 at 04:43 PM.
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I asked her about it later, and after she finished Apple News, Siri offered her several news sources, which included Fox News. And to a 6yo, Fox News sounds delightful. I would love to hear about what the foxes are up to.
Perhaps she will finally find out "What does the Fox say?"
We don't really have anything like that in central Iowa, the closest would probably be KDRB, which is more "Adult Hits." I always used to listen to that station because they had no horrible morning DJ like the other rock stations did so I could actually hear music on my commute.
We don't really have anything like that in central Iowa, the closest would probably be KDRB, which is more "Adult Hits." I always used to listen to that station because they had no horrible morning DJ like the other rock stations did so I could actually hear music on my commute.
Sorry I didn’t write it out! I’m waaaay too much of a radio nerd.
I like to make fun of it, but WXRT is world class in Its own right.
WXRT is like the characters from High Fidelity getting a radio station. They’re all way too into music to even dream of altering the format for drive-time.
As an aside, a big reason I became a radio nerd is growing up in a market where multiple world class stations exist. I mentioned WFMT, the classical station. We used to have a second classical station, and it was better.
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Jan 29, 2024, 09:42 PM
Originally Posted by subego
As an aside, a big reason I became a radio nerd is growing up in a market where multiple world class stations exist. I mentioned WFMT, the classical station. We used to have a second classical station, and it was better.
That's kind of the conclusion I came to this afternoon - we had one alternative rock station when I was in high school, but it switched to Hot AC about 10 years ago. We have an "Active Rock" station but that's as interesting as it gets.
For reference, I primarily listen to Alt Ctrl on Apple Music.
I'm learning a lot of new terms and categories here.
I agree with subego that an app should at least ASK you if you really want to import that 4:3 video, and then if you really want to keep the top and bottom of the image, or maybe you are fine with black bars on both sides so your original video content isn’t decapitated and de-footerated.
There used to be a couple of web sites that aggregated broadcast radio station feeds, and organized them by genre and location. I used those sites to get Celtic music in the ‘00s. I can’t remember how to find those sites anymore.
Of course, once I try to integrate anything into my dad’s setup it all falls to pieces.
Had the HomePod working fine at my place. At my dad’s I couldn’t get setup to complete, so I couldn’t change any settings. It only found the AirPlay speaker on one out ot three tries, and then the “stop” command wouldn’t work.
There used to be a couple of web sites that aggregated broadcast radio station feeds, and organized them by genre and location. I used those sites to get Celtic music in the ‘00s. I can’t remember how to find those sites anymore.
Perhaps your dad's place has heavy WiFi congestion. Neighbors all sharing ... er, cat videos 24/7.
Had the feeling something is wrong with the network for over a year, but I can’t track it down.
It shouldn’t be congestion. The HomePod, AirPlay receiver, and WiFi access point are all within 6 feet of each other. Access point is hardwired. Ethernet passes a continuity check.
If the ISP modem is actually a wireless router and set to the same channel, you'll have problems. Likewise if you have two DNS servers running. Suggest rebuilding things one item at a time, with a speedtest at each step.
ISP modem hardwired to laptop -> speedtest.
Modem to your base router -> speedtest. Both via wire and wireless.
Continue until problem found, or network is complete without problems.
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Jan 30, 2024, 05:28 PM
Originally Posted by reader50
If the ISP modem is actually a wireless router and set to the same channel, you'll have problems. Likewise if you have two DNS servers running. Suggest rebuilding things one item at a time, with a speedtest at each step.
ISP modem hardwired to laptop -> speedtest.
Modem to your base router -> speedtest. Both via wire and wireless.
Continue until problem found, or network is complete without problems.
Ever since we ditched our Alexa devices, the garage door openers have mysteriously begun working much better. We used to have to get about 1 foot away from the door before it would open. This is with an opener built into the car, so there are no batteries to get weak and need replacement.
The reason I was seeking out Celtic was 1) I was on a big Enya kick (like for several years) and 2) most of what I paid attention to was either as soothing as most of Enya’s stuff or purely instrumental. Both of these were helpful in being a successful 40+ college/grad student. And a big part of THAT was nice ‘phones to listen with and enough volume that “they” didn’t get on my nerves while I studied between classes.
When I opened the Radio Paradise player, it started with an interesting instrumental/synth bit. Then there’s John Hiett, Fleetwood Mac, Beck, Phish, Bob Dylan, and Third World. That’s a nice mix…
If the ISP modem is actually a wireless router and set to the same channel, you'll have problems. Likewise if you have two DNS servers running. Suggest rebuilding things one item at a time, with a speedtest at each step.
ISP modem hardwired to laptop -> speedtest.
Modem to your base router -> speedtest. Both via wire and wireless.
Continue until problem found, or network is complete without problems.
Was able to do wireless speedtests on two nodes this evening. Didn’t have time for wired. For reference, these are 6+ eeros.
Node A is a few feet away from and plugged directly into the cable modem. It’s in the basement.
Node B is in the living room, one floor up and on the opposite side of the house. It’s plugged directly into A by way of a very long Ethernet run.
My speedtests on both were numerically the same, however with B there were times I tried to run the test and it just sat there trying to find a server. Same thing happened on my dad’s iPad when I was trying to order dinner. The app just sat there.
Both nodes used to be Airport Extremes and my experience was similar, evidence the Ethernet cable is the problem.
The cable modem does indeed have its own, separate, active WiFi network. The eero should be smart enough to pick a different channel, and even if it didn’t, node B is well outside of the modem network’s connection range. Both reasons to discount that as the source of the problem. The modem is officially property of my dad’s business, so I need to loop people in before I dick around with it. I’m disinclined to go that route until I’ve definitively eliminated the higher probability solutions.
The nice aspect of the business thing is those equivalent speeds I mentioned were 350 down.
Turns out at least one issue I was having with the HomePod was unrelated, though it qualifies as a minor irritant. I set up the HomePod with my dad’s 1st gen iPad Pro, which got cut off at the last OS and is missing all the latest shiny. I’m also wondering if my tests at home worked more smoothly because I was using an AppleTV as the Airplay receiver instead of the Belkin one at my dad’s.
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Last edited by subego; Feb 1, 2024 at 05:00 AM.
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There are apparently no audio repair shops in Indianapolis. Seriously. I mean shops that work on good home audio gear. There are tons of car audio shops in the city, and that’s it. So, today, I’m shlepping the bass drivers from my JBLs an hour from me, to a guy in a podunk town who actually does work on home audio gear.
The drivers need re-foamed, and I have neither the experience nor acumen to do it myself. Plus, I have a slight tremor in my operating hand, and the possibility of fucking things up (and turning a re-foaming into a re-coning) is too great. The drivers are possibly the best JBL ever made for home speakers and are long-ago discontinued, so I really need the job done reliably right. I had this guy go through my amp last year, and he does a great job.
subego, suggest doing a wired test on Node B as a sanity check. If the issues remain, then I agree - it's probably the ethernet cable. Perhaps just placement - maybe it runs parallel to a power cable along the way.
If the issues go away, then Node B is getting interfered with somehow. Maybe a neighbor. The basement likely qualifies as a shielded location, free of neighborly interference. So the perfect reception there makes sense.
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