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I have a video file (avi) which somehow has the wrong default aspect ratio. If I open it with VLC or any other player, it's shown in 4:3, making everything look really tall/thin. When I manually change the aspect ratio to 16:9 it looks fine, but it's a bit annoying to do that.

I searched for a way to fix this without reencoding the video, but I only found a windows program (mpeg4 modifier) and some really old really unhelpful linux forum discussions. Maybe I'm just overlooking something very obvious.

Is there some native linux/Ubuntu tool that can do this?

I usually don't do much with my video files, so consider me a newby.

I'm running the 12.04 LTS version of Kubuntu.

fifaltra
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1 Answers1

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I just have want to ask the same Q. I'm searching for it long time. The problem is - I did not find answer containing info, where is PAR/DAR stored in e.g. h.264 video. In video stream itself ? Or in container ? Or ... ? If someone "who knows" would take time to answer ... It would by nice.

And amateur ("mine") solution ?

I use AviDemux - there you can select copy/copy for video/audio and as output container you can select MKV - and in his Options you can force "display width".

Example:

orig video resolution: 720x576 wit DAR=16:9 (PAR=64:45 [pixel aspect ratio])
Note - PAR*720=1024 => 1024x576=DAR=16:9)

but the video should be in fact 4:3=DAR => set in MKV options: force width=768 The video will be fast (without reencoding) saved and then played with correct DAR=4:3=768x576.

Mediainfo output on xxx.mkv will looks like:

Display aspect ratio : 4:3 Original display aspect ratio : 16:9

=> most players (inclusive TVs, STBs, ...) will respect the "new" 4:3 DAR.

Greet.

kapetr
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