Thank you for responding. I understand what aspect ratio is. What I don't understand is why the default pixel aspect ratio for WMV is 1.333 (HD 1080).

Doing a little more testing, it does appear that setting the pixel aspect ratio to 1.000 (Square) does produce a sharper image.

@ken-coughlin Yep, more pixels per inch (PPI) will give better quality.  

The 1.333 ratio, along with the non-square pixel aspect ratios, presented some challenges for digital image processing, especially when mixing different video formats.

1:1 square will have made this all easier to work with.

I understand what I read about this subject but I can't paraphrase it, I can only suggest Googling - 'why old pixel dimension was 1.333'. ,

@ken-coughlin Next time you have two weeks of vacation search the forum for SAR PAR DAR.

@ken-coughlin Next time you have two weeks of vacation search the forum for SAR PAR DAR.

Vacation? What is that? I'm the busiest retiree I know. :)

@Gid A history lesson as I understand it. But I'm always open to correction by more knowledgeable folk.

When 1080 HD came out around 20 years ago it was on tape. HDV with pixel size 1440x1080 and PAR 1.333. It used mpeg-2. Then Sony & Panasonic developed AVCHD which cameras recorded on internal HD and/or SD cards. It has pixel size 1920x1080 with PAR 1.000. It uses AVC/H264/mpeg-4.

The WMV file format predates all of the above and is considered by many to belong to the age of dinosaurs.

@Gid The WMV file format predates all of the above and is considered by many to belong to the age of dinosaurs.

Dinosaur or not, it runs on Windows without additional Codecs. 😁

Every video cue package seems to use K-Lite, and they all seem to have issues when you run multiple cued videos. So I'll continue riding the dinosaur, without the additional Codecs.

@ken-coughlin

https://fileinfo.com/extension/wmv

”However, as Windows Media Player's popularity has waned, and as developers have created cross-platform video file formats that rival WMV files' compression ratio, WMV files have fallen out of favor. As a result, MPEG-4 Video (.MP4) files are now much more popular than WMV files.”

@ken-coughlin

https://fileinfo.com/extension/wmv

”However, as Windows Media Player's popularity has waned, and as developers have created cross-platform video file formats that rival WMV files' compression ratio, WMV files have fallen out of favor. As a result, MPEG-4 Video (.MP4) files are now much more popular than WMV files.”

 

That's absolutely right, but I'm not concerned about the popularity. I'm concerned about being able to play multiple videos in a cue without problems. Even one of the most popular pieces of software, that can cue videos, to an extent, VLC, screws up.

@EricLNZ 👍

@ken-coughlin Hi.

Every video cue package seems to use K-Lite, and they all seem to have issues when you run multiple cued videos. So I'll continue riding the dinosaur, without the additional Codecs

render videos in WMV format for projection from an older Windows PC

'Vegas Pro (formerly Sony Vegas) is not natively designed for macOS and is a Windows-only software' - In other words everyone on this forum uses Windows,, Can you clarify a bit? An 'older' Windows PC that has problems with mp4's would have to be Neolithic .

What do you mean 'projection' ?

Are you saying you avoid mp4?

I haven't installed any additional codecs but I don't often work with non-sq PAR videos. K-Lite are generally frowned upon on this forum & I doubt many have them installed (could be wrong).

VLC isn't perfect, I use MPC-EB player most of the time, between the two I can play most if not all media.

The issue isn't general playback from what I understand, it is issues with software used cueing multiple videos for some kind of event.

The issue isn't general playback from what I understand, it is issues with software used cueing multiple videos for some kind of event.

That's right. Allow me to explain. I run lights, sound & video for many theatrical productions. Some of those productions include 30+ videos. Some of the cueing packages out the either include K-Lite or recommend using K-Lite to support playing multiple video formats (MP4, AVI, MOV, etc.) I have found problems where some videos won't play at all, some will only play the audio and some will crash the program.

What I have found is that I have much more stability by rendering all videos as WMV. That's where my original question arose. Importing a 1920x1080 MP4, when rendering as WMV, all of profiles will set the output to 1440x1080 with a Pixel Aspect Ratio of 1.333. I understand this is a hold-over from an older video format, and I have created my own profiles with a 1.000 PAR.

Possibly it comes down to the equipment being used to play the videos,

Possibly it comes down to the equipment being used to play the videos,

That equipment would have no effect on the default rendering profiles provided by Vegas. Vegas has no idea what hardware will be used to play the videos, it only knows the system it's being rendered on, which in this case is a Windows 10 x64 system capable of 4K video.

My comment was in respect of your first paragraph - "I have found problems where some videos won't play at all, some will only play the audio and some will crash the program".

A few years ago my video group came across a similar problem with a Panasonic Blu-ray player we once used to play USB thumbdrives. It would play some files and not others yet the files played okay on other players including other Panasonics (which were a different model). I even tried updating our players firmware but it made no difference.

Anyway your original PAR query has been solved.

My comment was in respect of your first paragraph - "I have found problems where some videos won't play at all, some will only play the audio and some will crash the program".

A few years ago my video group came across a similar problem with a Panasonic Blu-ray player we once used to play USB thumbdrives. It would play some files and not others yet the files played okay on other players including other Panasonics (which were a different model). I even tried updating our players firmware but it made no difference

Sorry, I misunderstood your response.

In my case, it has nothing to do with hardware. A file on a laptop can play solo, but when added to a cueing software package, it may or may not play. If the cue is re-arranged, a different file may not play. All files are located in the same folder on the same physical SSD.

@ken-coughlin, and I might be shooting in the dark, but have you considered using MPC-BE?

@ken-coughlin, and I might be shooting in the dark, but have you considered using MPC-BE?

Thanks, I'll look at it, but as I said, I'm running theater productions, running light via DMX, which have to be integrated with sound & video. I don't know that this will integrate properly with a DMX lighting application.

Ahh.... ok.....understood. It's tough being a "one man show". You have to use what you know that works, even if it isn't the "latest and greatest".

@ken-coughlin said: "I'm still curious about why the default is 1.333 (HD 1080)."

Techno-Philosophical SWAG

In the early days of high definition (1080 vertical lines) it might have been an attempt to save storage space as @Gid alluded to earlier. My son had a Sony camcorder that wrote to an internal Microdrive with the following media characteristics:

General
ID                                       : 0 (0x0)
Complete name                            : 
Q:\Family Archives\Chris' Camera\2007\2007-06-17 Ball Game\20070617103530.m2ts
Format                                   : BDAV
Format/Info                              : Blu-ray Video
File size                                : 35.9 MiB
Duration                                 : 18 s 476 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 16.3 Mb/s
Maximum Overall bit rate                 : 18.0 Mb/s
Frame rate                               : 29.970 FPS
Recorded date                            : 2007-06-17 10:35:30-07:00
Writing application                      : Sony 

Video
ID                                       : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : Main@L4
Format settings                          : CABAC / 2 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 2 frames
Format settings, GOP                     : M=2, N=15
Codec ID                                 : 27
Duration                                 : 18 s 452 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 15.2 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 16.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 440 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan type, store method                  : Separated fields
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.326
Stream size                              : 33.4 MiB (93%)
IrisFNumber                              : 4.000000

Audio
ID                                       : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : 129
Duration                                 : 18 s 528 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 448 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Delay relative to video                  : -67 ms
Stream size                              : 1 013 KiB (3%)
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Dialog Normalization                     : -31 dB
compr                                    : -0.28 dB
cmixlev                                  : -3.0 dB
surmixlev                                : -3 dB
dialnorm_Average                         : -31 dB
dialnorm_Minimum                         : -31 dB
dialnorm_Maximum                         : -31 dB

It's likely the manufacturers chose to save fewer bits to the disk and have the playback hardware expand the bits horizontally hoping that most folks wouldn't notice. There was also the issue of the processor in the recording device and its ability to process the throughput of 1920x1080 bits vs 1440x1080 bits while running on battery at the price point that mortals could afford.

I would also guess that the non-square PARs of SD video from around the world has little to nothing to do with this particular scenario that you asked about. That's another issue that predates even someone as old as me.

/Techno-Philosophical SWAG

Here is a corollary to this discussion: Event Media Pixel Aspect Ratio Weirdness _ Vegas 17 & 18

Reference:

PAR, SAR, and DAR: Making Sense of Standard Definition (SD) video pixels - BAVC Media