I have a black line up the top left of my videos when they have been ripped from DVDs. I have tried different DVDs and also different ways of ripping (Handbrake and MakeMKV).
Does anyone know how to fix this? Or is it normal and do people just clip a few pixels from the top to fix it up.
Thanks in advance.
Exmaple Image: h_ttp://i42.tinypic.com/34h8775.png (remove the underscore, as a new user it won't let me put up an image, however it is pretty important in this question)
I don't think it's visible when played back on the TV.
I see this in BBC TV shows that a family member records to DVD in the UK (your posted image is the intro to The Office - but I see it in The Thick of It (below).
Originally posted by attar: I don't think it's visible when played back on the TV.
I see this in BBC TV shows that a family member records to DVD in the UK (your posted image is the intro to The Office - but I see it in The Thick of It (below).
Thanks for the reply. I have actually seen it in episodes of The Simpsons that I have ripped too. And for me, it is quite visible on my TV. I use XBMC running at 1920x1080.
I don't know exactly why they're there. I think it's something to do with the process of converting/scanning film to DVD, which is probably why DVDs containing animation don't have those half-black lines, but it's quite common.
Normally when viewing video on a TV it overscans, which means around 5% of the picture (sides, top and bottom) ends up outside the screen area, so you don't see those half-black lines or any black bars down the sides. When you play video on a PC monitor though there's no overscanning, so you see everything. I'm pretty sure if you play the original DVDs on your PC those lines will still be there.
There's no way to remove them when using MakeMKV. Normally when re-encoding you'd crop them so they're not encoded, although I've seen plenty of encodes where they haven't been cropped. If you're using "autocrop" when encoding, they probably won't be removed, so you need to manually adjust the cropping.
Many new TVs allow you to disable overscanning, but often only for 1080p video or when connected to a PC.
If you're viewing the video on a PC monitor (and using MakeMKV rather than re-encoding) the only option is to use a player which allows you to zoom in on the video a little, which basically produces the same result as overscanning on a TV. MPC-HC for example, easily lets you zoom in by tapping the "9" key on the numeric keypad (the "5" key resets it). One tap on the 9 key zooms in by 5% (I think) which means when you run the video full-screen on your PC monitor it should display the same as it would on most TVs (although some TVs probably overscan by more than 5%).
Thanks for the information. I will do some more testing. I will play the DVDs that I've noticed the lines on, on the computer to see if they exist there as well.
Originally posted by ckeech: Thanks for the information. I will do some more testing. I will play the DVDs that I've noticed the lines on, on the computer to see if they exist there as well.
I'll be astounded if they don't.
If you're encoding the video you generally only have to crop two pixels top and bottom to get rid of the half black lines. Judging from your picture, cropping about 4 to 6 pixels each side will remove the black lines from the sides if the conversion program's "autocrop" doesn't get them.
