So Congress finally passes another stimulus package with said direct payments to individuals. I'll likely get $600, and the checks may be deposited as soon as next week. Time to go 3DS shopping... that is unless my own 3DS cart slot gets it's act together.
Anyway, I've come across a very strange video sizing issue with VLC Media Player. I normally use QuickTime for video playback, but if I need to make screencaps of a TV show or cartoon, VLC is my go to player. From DVDs to MP4 files, making screencaps with VLC is easy. There is one problem VLC has when playing back the MP4's I make.
When encoding my VHS rips in AVIDemux, I keep the resolution at 1280x720 but I add a 4:3 aspect ratio flag to the file so it's not horribly stretched out. This results in a display resolution of 960x720. In QuickTime player, it opens my files at the proper 960x720. But in VLC, open that same file and the video size has nearly doubled. VLCs media information states the file is playing at 1280x720, but it's more like scaling up to 1080p 4:3.
This isn't a major issue since my files are meant for playback on a TV, but for screencaps, it results in captures that are far too large in size. I have to manually set the screenshot resolution to 960x720 in the advanced VLC settings. But this setting applies to any screencaps you make, so if I wanted to take screencaps of a DVD, I have to go back into the advanced settings and reset the resolution to the defaults.
To further test this bug, I made an encoding of a VHS rip with the encoder settings I use, but in two files. One file has the standard 4:3 flag set, while the other has a 16:9 flag set. Resolution is 1280x720. When I load the 16:9 stretched VHS recording into VLC, and then use VLC's internal aspect ratio setting at 4:3, the video is now in it's proper display size, just like it shows up in QuickTime.
I have screenshots of this issue shown below, and I am planning on sharing this on the VLC forums. It seems like a weird bug with how VLC handles the MP4 metadata, but who knows? I'll also share my screenshots there as well.
The first two screenshots are the MP4 file with 4:3 set in the metadata. The last two is the 16:9 file and how VLC handles that differently from the first file.