PowerDVD 20 Aspect Ratio

DARIN fork

Newbie Joined: Dec 08, 2010 21:03 Messages: 2 Offline

Solved by

Sep 22, 2020 22:16

I purchased PowerDVD 20 in April when it was released. I immediately noticed that .iso files would not maintain Aspect Ratio.

TrueTheater Stretch (Fit to Screen) is the only decent aspect ratio for my large collection of .iso files, which I've been watching on PowerDVD since 2013. Every time the playback is started or re-started the aspect ratio switches back to Stretch to Fit the Screen; it never did this before with PowerDVD 17 or prior versions.

I spent hours working through the cumbersome process of creating a support ticket with Cyberlink. They even sent this reply:

"With reference to your query, after pilot checking, we have reproduced the same condition in our lab on testing platform when playing ISO disk image specifically. This case has been escalated to engineering team for further investigation."

You can imagine how frustrated I am to find that nearly 5 months later they produce a program update and leave this bug unfixed. I also have aspect ratio issues with 4K files, which always open up minimized on the screen, and each time a file is started or re-started the Aspect Ratio has to be reset to Keep Aspect Ratio.

Extremely disappointing that the company ignores bugs in their programs that they've been aware of for several months.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Sep 23. 2020 20:18

QC2.0

Senior Contributor Joined: Apr 27, 2016 04:02 Messages: 610 Offline

Sep 22, 2020 23:13

Quote I purchased PowerDVD 20 in April when it was released. I immediately noticed that .iso files would not maintain Aspect Ratio.

TrueTheater Stretch (Fit to Screen) is the only decent aspect ratio for my large collection of .iso files, which I've been watching on PowerDVD since 2013. Every time the playback is started or re-started the aspect ratio switches back to Stretch to Fit the Screen; it never did this before with PowerDVD 17 or prior versions.

I spent hours working through the cumbersome process of creating a support ticket with Cyberlink. They even sent this reply:

"With reference to your query, after pilot checking, we have reproduced the same condition in our lab on testing platform when playing ISO disk image specifically. This case has been escalated to engineering team for further investigation."

You can imagine how frustrated I am to find that nearly 5 months later they produce a program update and leave this bug unfixed. I also have aspect ratio issues with 4K files, which always open up minimized on the screen, and each time a file is started or re-started the Aspect Ratio has to be reset to Keep Aspect Ratio.

Extremely disappointing that the company ignores bugs in their programs that they've been aware of for several months.

If you play a 16:9 video on current popular 16:9 monitors, I don't think we need to use the smart stretch to crop the video further.
This feature is for playing legacy 4:3 source video on a wide screen. It is really a "legacy" for old video playback.
https://www.cyberlink.com/stat/technology/ita/true-theater-solution.jsp

So, your ISO files are all produced from 4:3 video sources?

Most of 4k videos are encoded with 16:9 frames, so smart stretch (smart cropping) feature is really not for the playback as well if you use a 16:9 wide screen. So, do you always keep the smart stretch setting on due to above case when playing 4k video file?

If it is the case, it is not surprised that powerdvd requires you to restore the aspect ratio setting to "keep aspect ratio" every time when you play non 4:3 videos.

DARIN fork

Newbie Joined: Dec 08, 2010 21:03 Messages: 2 Offline

Sep 23, 2020 02:17

I don't think you understand the issue or the aspect ratio feature. Why would anyone want to change the aspect ratio of a video if it was already the same as the screen? I'm not trying to crop my video, I'm trying to stretch it without cropping it. TrueTheater Stretch (Fit to Screen) is the only mode that stretches without cropping and with .iso videos and it should remember the mode when the player reads a 4:3 video.

Quote

If you play a 16:9 video on current popular 16:9 monitors, I don't think we need to use the smart stretch to crop the video further.
This feature is for playing legacy 4:3 source video on a wide screen. It is really a "legacy" for old video playback.
https://www.cyberlink.com/stat/technology/ita/true-theater-solution.jsp

So, your ISO files are all produced from 4:3 video sources?

Most of 4k videos are encoded with 16:9 frames, so smart stretch (smart cropping) feature is really not for the playback as well if you use a 16:9 wide screen. So, do you always keep the smart stretch setting on due to above case when playing 4k video file?

If it is the case, it is not surprised that powerdvd requires you to restore the aspect ratio setting to "keep aspect ratio" every time when you play non 4:3 videos.