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VideoPress Falsely Claims to Preserve Aspect Ratio!!!

  1. joshuazepeda
    Member

    I have posted several HDV .mov videos, both with an aspect ratio of 16x9. VideoPress is displaying both videos at an aspect ratio of 4x3, resulting in terrible, distorted footage. Why is this happening???? (VideoPress documentation claims that "We always preserve the aspect ratio of the original video.") Hmmmm... REALLY???

    Anyone have any ideas? Suggestions? (Other than asking for my money back....)

    The blog I need help with is joshuazepeda.wordpress.com.

  2. thesacredpath
    Member

    All I can offer it to tell you to look over this section in the videopress support page: http://support.wordpress.com/videopress/#additional-info .

    Other than that you will have to contact staff directly I expect at http://support.wordpress.com/contact/ .

  3. tellyworth
    Staff

    I'll bring this to the attention of our Video Ninjas.

  4. nbachiyski
    Staff

    joshuazepeda, there seems to be a problem with your video file. Our encoding software (ffmpeg), in addition to all other players I tried, reports resolution of 1440x1080. Only QuickTime/iTunes report the actual one: 1888x1062.

    We will look into the problem.

  5. drhailin
    Member

    The original video has different frame aspect ratio and display aspect ratio, and that caused some confusion.

    ffmpeg -i vamadevan-trailer.mov gives:

    Duration: 00:01:38.69, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 26540 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(eng): Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 1440x1080 [PAR 4:3 DAR 16:9], 25000 kb/s, 29.97 tb(r)
    Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: pcm_s16le, 48000 Hz, stereo, 1536 kb/s

    so the frame dimension is 1440x1080, which is 4:3. However, the DAR(display aspect ratio) is 16:9. VideoPress retains the frame dimension aspect ratio.
    To make the video display with the desierable dimension, you may specify additional parameter: w= h= .
    In your exmaple, you could specify:
    wpvideo rHKt1Eme w=500 h=281
    Which will display your video with 16:9 ratio and fits your theme content perfectly.

  6. joshuazepeda
    Member

    Thanks guys for looking into this! I will try Hailin's suggestion and see how that works. (Sounds promising.) Anyone have any idea how to export a .mov file (using FCP) so that its PAR & DAR are the same? Quite curious...

  7. joshuazepeda
    Member

    Applying the w & h code above seems to have partially resolved the aspect ratio problem with playback, as long as playback is not in full screen. If full screen is selected, playback reverts to the 4x3 aspect ratio. Any idea why?

    Also: I have a fairly fast internet connection. Never the less, when playing back the movie (after it's completely downloded) there is a surprising degree of "choppyness". The video seems to be getting caught, then skipping slightly, as if it were still attempting to download and just doing so very slowly. Once completely downloaded, no matter how often I play it back, the choppyness remains... This problem is even more pronounced when I choose the full screen option. (In full screen mode, entire sections of the video get stuck, while the audio continues without interruption.) Any idea why???

    (It's worth noting that I've uploaded the exact same video file to facebook, youtube and vimeo seamlessly without having any of the problems we've discussed thus far.)

  8. drhailin
    Member

    In the full screen mode, the player uses the frame dimension, so it will be 4:3.
    I've played the HD video in full screen mode without seeing the choppyness you reported. Currently VideoPress uses one-pass encoding, and we are looking at two-pass encoding to improve the playback quality. It will be improved in the near future.

  9. joshuazepeda
    Member

    Thanks Hailin. Why is the player designed to use the frame dimension when clearly it is the display aspect ratio that would normally be intended as the preferred aspect ratio for viewers to experience the video? Can the player be redesigned to recognize the DAR and make that it's default preference? I'm surprised that the designer(s) would create a player that ignores the DAR and instead presents the PAR. The circumstances under which an author would prefer the video's PAR over its DAR seem very rare indeed.... But perhaps the times that a video's PAR & DAR are not identical is what's rare, in which case I need to figure out how to make sure the PAR & DAR are the same!
    Did you notice any choppyness when playing back in the SD mode? I wonder why I'm having trouble with choppyness and you are not.... Thanks for all your help!

  10. drhailin
    Member

    "PAR & DAR are not identical is what's rare" - that is precisely the issue. Nevertheless, We will consider this as a future enhancement so that when the ratios are different, we'd preserve the DAR.

    I don't notice the choppyness when playing back in SD mode either. But I have high speed fiber connection at 10Mb/sec. Our data rate is much higher than that of Youtube, and higher than that of Vimeo and Facebook.

  11. joshuazepeda
    Member

    I see... Thanks Hailin for all your help! Would be great if you're able to include this in any future enhancements (as well as seeing that the Full Screen setting retains the w & h settings). In the mean time, I will continue looking into how to correct the PAR & DAR disparity on my end (using FCP). Any suggestions?? Thanks again for some very useful info!

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