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* What is it?
The Sample Aspect Ratio (SAR) (sometimes called Pixel Aspect Ratio or just
Pel Aspect Ratio) is defined as the ratio of the width of the sample to the
height of the sample. While pixels on a computer monitor generally are
"square" meaning that their SAR is 1:1, digitized video usually has rather
odd SARs. Playback of material with a particular SAR on a system with
a different SAR will result in a stretched/squashed image. A correction is
necessary that relies on the knowledge of both SARs.
for example:
width x height = 704x576, DAR = 4:3 ==> SAR = 2304:2112 or 12:11
Please note that if your material is a digitized analog signal, you should
not use this equation to calculate the SAR. Refer to the manual of your
digitizing equipment or this link instead.
2. Overscan
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* What is it?
The term overscan generally refers to all regions of an image that do
not contain information but are added to achieve a certain resolution or
aspect ratio. A "letterboxed" image therefore has overscan at the top and
the bottom. This is not the overscan this option refers to. Neither refers
it to the overscan that is added as part of the process of digitizing an
analog signal. Instead it refers to the "overscan" process on a display
that shows only a part of the image. What that part is depends on the
display.
3. Video Format
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* What is it?
A purely informative setting, that explains what the type of your analog
video was, before you digitized it.
4. Full Range
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* What is it?
Another relic from digitizing analog video. When digitizing analog video
the digital representation of the luma and chroma levels is limited to lie
within 16..235 and 16..240 respectively. Playback equipment usually assumes
all digitized samples to be within this range. However most DVDs use the
full range of 0..255 for luma and chroma samples, possibly resulting in an
oversaturation when played back on that equipment. To avoid this a range
correction is needed.
* What is it?
A videophile setting. The average users won't ever need it.
Not all monitor models show all colors the same way. When comparing the
same image on two different monitor models you might find that one of them
"looks more blue", while the other "looks more green". Bottom line is, each
monitor model has a different color profile, which can be used to correct
colors in a way, that images look almost the same on all monitors. The same
goes for printers and film/ video digitizing equipment. If the color
profile of the digitizing equipment is known, it is possible to correct the
colors and gamma of the decoded h264 stream in a way that the video stream
looks the same, regardless of the digitizing equipment used.
* What is it?
A videophile setting. The average user won't ever notice a difference.
Due to a weakness of the eye, it is often economic to reduce the number of
chroma samples in a process called subsampling. In particular x264 uses
only one chroma sample of each chroma channel every block of 2x2 luma
samples. There are a number of possibilities on how this subsampling is
done, each resulting in another relative location of the chroma sample
towards the luma samples. The Chroma Sample Location matters when the
subsampling process is reversed, e.g. the number of chroma samples is
increased. This is most likely to happen at color space conversions. If it
is not done correctly the chroma values may appear shifted compared to the
luma samples by at most 1 pixel, or strangely blurred.
If you transcode from MPEG1 with proper subsampled 4:2:0, and don't do any
color space conversion, you should set this option to 1.
If you transcode from MPEG2 with proper subsampled 4:2:0, and don't do any
color space conversion, you should set this option to 0.
If you transcode from MPEG4 with proper subsampled 4:2:0, and don't do any
color space conversion, you should set this option to 0.
If you do the color space conversion yourself this isn't that easy. If the
filter kernel of the subsampling is ( 0.5, 0.5 ) in one direction then the
chroma sample location in that direction is between the two luma samples.
If your filter kernel is ( 0.25, 0.5, 0.25 ) in one direction then the
chroma sample location in that direction is equal to one of the luma
samples. H264 Annex E contains images that tell you how to "transform" your
Chroma Sample Location into a value of 0 to 5 that you can pass to x264.