Hello there, I’ve been trying to avoid posting for help on this matter; but after more than two weeks of reading through lots of posts and guides I got overwhelmed and still unable to make any progress.
Like many others, I’m capturing my old VHS tapes using an ATI AIW card through
VirtualDub with
Huffyuv compression at 352x480 frame size.
My plan is to keep the master file for archival and create two more files for delivery mediums. The first will be a DVD, I used
Avidemux to encode to mpeg using a two pass VBR and got a file that VLC plays at 4:3 DAR with no issues, though I still haven't burned a disc to test on a player.
My second task is to create a mkv file, consisting of H.264 and ACC audio and video streams to stream from a Plex server, and here is where everything falls apart. The original avi file plays as a tall and skinny video on VLC (as expected) unless I select the appropriate DAR of 4:3, but after encoding it to H.264 using
Avidemux or Hybrid and setting (or at least that’s what I think I’m doing) the correct DAR, VLC will automatically play it using the said aspect ratio, problem is, Plex will still play it as a tall and skinny version.
I’ve tried using MKVToolNix and ffmpeg to change the aspect ratio and apparently it does set a flag on either the container of the video file itself, but Plex still won’t recognize the correct DAR.
The only way I have been successful with this task is resizing to 640x480, but I don’t know if this is the only way to go or if maybe I’m missing something else.
According to ffmepg this is the information I get from the files:
Master file (avi)
Stream #0:0: Video:
huffyuv (HFYU / 0x55594648), yuv422p, 352x480, 32110 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 29.97 tbn, 29.97 tbc
DVD file (mpeg)
Stream #0:0: Video: mpeg2video (Main), yuv420p(tv, progressive), 352x480 [SAR 20:11 DAR 4:3], 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc
MKV file (h264 original size not deinterlaced)
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(progressive), 352x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 11:15], SAR 20:11 DAR 4:3, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 1k tbn, 59.94 tbc (default)
MKV file (h264 resized and BOB deinterlaced)
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(tv, bt470bg/unknown/unknown, progressive), 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 59.94 fps, 59.94 tbr, 1k tbn, 119.88 tbc (default) (forced)
I would be grateful if someone could help me out, and in the process, enlighten me regarding PAR, SAR and DAR though the entire VHS to MPEG and VHS to H264 workflow.