RE: Vista Ultimate, WMP 11 playback wrong aspect ratio (forces 16x

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Please share the name of the tool you found that offers this functionality so
that we can do some inhouse testing and determine where the bug actually
lies.

Understand that Media Player uses many components in the underlying
operating system, so technically it's not WMP that is reading and then
decompressing the file incorrectly. Being able to tell the right developer
about the issue and provide an example would help.

I won't ask the nature of the videos, but did they all come from the same
place or are they from different providers, and roughly what is the
percentage of "custom" vs "regular" files with regard to the aspect ratio?

I'm asking because, in all truth, 4:3 isn't a custom ratio for video (it's
standard television aspect ratio and has been around for well over half a
century), and so it may just be that the content providers need to be
informed about their non-standard authoring practices.

I'm not blowing this off, it will get reported, but in the even that the
amount of content authored like this is very small and from a single
provider, I'm just trying to set reasonable expectations on whether this will
be addressed in a manner that you want or not.


--
Thanks!
Mike Poz [MSFT]
--------------------
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.


"Peter Rohlfs" wrote:

I found a tool for setting aspect ration in Divx based AVI file.
When the asect ratio was set to custom 4:3 it would play widescreen.
When I changed the Aspect ratio to regular 4:3 they now play right.

WMP is not properly reading custom aspect ratio.

Thanks,
Peter
--
"Mike Poz [MSFT]" wrote:

If the content is authored with incorrect information there's nothing we can
set in Windows or in Media Player to change that.

Just to be sure, have you made sure you have the latest video drivers from
the manufacturer? We know that many of the drivers have updates to correct
issues that were being seen by customers once the OS hit the streets.

--
Thanks!
Mike Poz [MSFT]
--------------------
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.


"Peter Rohlfs" wrote:

Mike,
I have this set right to 1. But I think I'm starting to track down the issue.

It seems that certain video file formats have an aspect ratio flag embedded.

The older WMP ignored this? WMP 11 does not or perhaps vista written codecs
themselves are honoring these flag(s)? Or the video driver?

And some of the files I've downloaded over the years had the flag set wrong,
but since it was ignored they played right?

That is my current working theory, I welcome any comments, corrections
and/or fixes.

Thanks,
Peter
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"Mike Poz [MSFT]" wrote:

Hi Peter,

Not sure if this will work but it's worth a try. Bring up Tools -> Options
in the media player. Select the Devices tab and when the display item
appears in the box, double click it.

Is the Pixel Aspect Ratio at anything other than 1.000? If so, please try
setting it to 1.000 and then try playing the content.

Does this help?

--
Thanks!
Mike Poz [MSFT]
--------------------
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.


"Peter Rohlfs" wrote:

I have some video files that played fine on my XP SP2 Media Center 9 PC.
They should play (as most PC video files) in a 4X3 aspect ratio.

On my new Vista Ultimate machine, WMP 11, 8800 GTX video card (latest
driver) some of these videos are being stretched widescreen (16X9) messing up
the aspect ratio. Other play fine.

I've seen this behavior on both avi and mpg files.

Is there a way to stop WMP 11 from choosing to playback in an anomorphic
mode?

Does anyone know what causes it to do this?

Is there some utility I have to run on th files to flag them properly?

Thanks,
Peter
.

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