Different rendered file types display differently

[John Rofrano]

Do other media players have the same behavior? How about if you drop them both on the Vegas Pro timeline? Do they look different?

From your images it looks like VLC is treating the two videos differently. Both videos are 480 pixels high. How come VLC doesn’t at least display them as the same height? After all it should.

I think your issue is with the way VLC is displaying the videos and not the videos themselves. It looks like if you stretched the MP4 video to be the same size as the MPEG2 video they would overlap perfectly. This may be a VLC issue. Try a few media players including dropping them back into Vegas Pro.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Brian Tallant]

When I drop them on the Vegas timeline there is only a barely perceptible difference (which might be because I rendered the MPEG-4 as 656×480 instead of 655×480).

I tried stretching the two videos out like you suggested to see if they would exactly overlap, but I got the same results as when I looked at each one fullscreen: the MPEG-4 is slightly wider (or slightly shorter, depending on how I stretch the video). Anyway, you can’t get them to overlap perfectly.

I tried looking at them in Windows Media Player, and the results were pretty startling. This time it was the MPEG-2 that was wider, by A LOT. I looked at it in fullscreen and measured it with a ruler, and it was a full inch wider than the MPEG-4 on my monitor. At least with VLC the difference wasn’t THAT pronounced. But, bottom line, Windows Media Player displayed the two file types differently.

Maybe the most important factor is how Vegas displays them, but I wonder why these well-known media players display various file types so differently, and I wonder if there is a media player that would display everything properly. Is there a particular media player that you use?

And finally, I wonder how YouTube will display them. My goal is to be able to upload things to the internet and have them look the same as the way I edited them. I realize a little skewing might not be noticeable to a lot of people, but I notice it, and it bugs me.

UPDATE – By the way, I tried all of this with an uncompressed AVI, and both media players behaved exactly the same way as they did with MPEG-4. And when I tried the AVI on the Vegas timeline, that barely perceptible difference was gone (I’m guessing because I was able to make the AVI 655×480 instead of 656×480).

[John Rofrano]

[Brian Tallant] “I tried looking at them in Windows Media Player, and the results were pretty startling. This time it was the MPEG-2 that was wider, by A LOT. I looked at it in fullscreen and measured it with a ruler, and it was a full inch wider than the MPEG-4 on my monitor. At least with VLC the difference wasn’t THAT pronounced. But, bottom line, Windows Media Player displayed the two file types differently.”

What you have uncovered is that Windows Media Player doesn’t always support non-square pixels correctly so it probably displayed the 720×480 PAR 0.9091 as 720×480 PAR 1.0 which would be wider than 655×480 PAR 1.0 by a fair amount.

[Brian Tallant] “Maybe the most important factor is how Vegas displays them, but I wonder why these well-known media players display various file types so differently, and I wonder if there is a media player that would display everything properly. Is there a particular media player that you use?”

Vegas is showing you the true size of the videos which is why I suggested you use that as a rule. I don’t trust any media players which is why you have to test with several because you never know what media player someone might use. I’d say you solved your problem since both files look fine in Vegas Pro.

[Brian Tallant] “And finally, I wonder how YouTube will display them. My goal is to be able to upload things to the internet and have them look the same as the way I edited them. I realize a little skewing might not be noticeable to a lot of people, but I notice it, and it bugs me.”

The only solution to that is to upload to YouTube and see what it looks like because YouTube has it’s own set of assumptions that it uses regardless of what type of video you give it so that’s another questionable conversion to deal with.

[Brian Tallant] “UPDATE – By the way, I tried all of this with an uncompressed AVI, and both media players behaved exactly the same way as they did with MPEG-4. And when I tried the AVI on the Vegas timeline, that barely perceptible difference was gone (I’m guessing because I was able to make the AVI 655×480 instead of 656×480).”

So what have we learned? Nothing is wrong with Vegas Pro. Nothing is wrong with your rendered files. Media Players don’t always display media correctly. Rendering media for multiple targets is more of a gamble than a science. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Brian Tallant]

Yes, I guess the main thing I learned is that the fault lies with the media players, not Vegas. That’s reassuring, although the question still remains as to how the average person is supposed to watch media on their computer in an accurately presented way…Windows Media and VLC both skew the proportions, at least on my computer.

Thanks John, for taking the time to go through this with me!

[John Rofrano]

[Brian Tallant] “although the question still remains as to how the average person is supposed to watch media on their computer in an accurately presented way…Windows Media and VLC both skew the proportions, at least on my computer.”

The average person doesn’t deal with legacy formats that use non-square pixels. The average person is shooting 720p or 1080p with square pixels and their videos look the same regardless of where they view it. Also, the average person doesn’t care… they watch stretched out SD video on their HD TV all the time and can’t tell the difference. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com