Hosting videos, YouTube, aspect ratio?

[2ball]

I have VHS video from the 1980's converted to MPG. I want to host these files somewhere.

Some of the files I just want to make available for people to view. I picked YouTube to try out first.

Everything is cool on youtube, but the aspect ratio. It always want to play the videos 16:9. The videos were shot in 4:3 and look better when they are not stretched out.

I converted the videos from DVD format to MPG in VirtualDub2.

I am trying to figure out if the MPG is in 4:3 and what ever program plays it switches it to 16:9 of if it was converted to 16:9 when I converted it to an MPG?

Is there a way to make youtube play the video in 4:3?

Also, What is a good product to use to host these videos? I see the problem with Youtube will be the low resolution downloads if people want to save them.

[2ball]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2ball

I converted the videos from DVD format to MPG in VirtualDub2.

I meant DVD Decripter

[latreche34]

You better off upload a square pixel format and make sure it's at least HD like 1440x1080, Uploading mpeg-2 SD with into youtube will result in a mushed mess. YT consider SD formats as important as GIFs.

[2ball]

Just a little more background. These are vhs tapes that were put on a dvd with one of those vhs/dvd recorders.
I used dvd decripter to get them in MPG format on my computer.

How do I tell what the aspect ratio is? did the VHS/DVD recorder switch the aspect ratio to 16:9? Is the player switching the aspect ratio. I can force 4:3 on the player and it looks good.

I am trying to figure out what YT is doing. When I upload phone video it stays in the Aspect Ratio that is was recorded in. So I am wondering if the VHS video got switched to 16:9 somewhere along the way.

[latreche34]

VHS tapes are 4:3 by design, But capturing them is not as such, scan lines are a fixed number 480 for NTSC and 576 for PAL/SECAM, However sampling each scan line is not based on aspect ratio, in fact all standards NTSC, PAL and SECAM sample at the exact same horizontal sampling rate of 720 samples per scan line, 16 blank samples (pixels) are added 8 pixels on each side to accomodate for all types of tape formats, So in average there is about 704 give or take of active video in each scan line based on tape format (VHS, Beta, 8mm, uMatic, V2000, Pro formats ...).

So as you can see neither 704x480, nor 704x576 is a 4:3 aspect ratio, therefore pixels have to have a rectangular shape to make the display ratio 4:3, Hence the name non square pixels. Or as I suggested above, take the actual resolution and resize to 1440x1080 and all proportions will line up automatically.

[2ball]

I'm new to any kind of video editing. What is a good program to use to resize the mpg file?

[vwestlife]

Use MediaInfo to determine whether the video is flagged as 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio: https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo

If it's flagged as 16:9 when it actually contains 4:3 video (or vice versa), you can use FFMPEG to fix it without needing to re-encode the video. All it does it change the aspect ratio flag:

ffmpeg -i input.mpg -aspect 4:3 -c copy output.mpg

Change "input.mpg" and "output.mpg" to the appropriate file names.

VideoReDo Plus can also change the aspect ratio without re-encoding, but unfortunately it has been discontinued because its author passed away.

YouTube should abide by the aspect ratio flag and display it correctly, even if it's something nonsensical like a 640x480 16:9 video or a 1280x720 4:3 video.

[Gary34]

Quote:

YouTube should abide by the aspect ratio flag and display it correctly, even if it's something nonsensical like a 640x480 16:9 video or a 1280x720 4:3 video.

YouTube ignores flags.

[Hushpower]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gary34

YouTube ignores flags.

That is incorrect.

[lordsmurf]

Flags always depend on format. No single answer.

[vwestlife]

In my experience, with formats like H.264 (in an MP4 or MOV container) or MPEG2, YouTube does abide by the aspect ratio flag. But when I tried uploading DV (admittedly not recently), it did not, and just displayed it as square pixels.

Years ago, you could add yt:stretch=4:3 or yt:stretch=16:9 to the tags to fix it after uploading, but they grandfathered that feature a long time ago. It still works on old videos with those tags, but not if you try to add those tags a new or existing video now.

[Hushpower]

Quote:

Originally Posted by VWestlife

But when I tried uploading DV (admittedly not recently), it did not, and just displayed it as square pixels

Well, you'd better try again because YT does respect DV flags on 4:3 videos; I haven't tried 16:9 DV because I don't have one.