Just as there are icons for 4K, Dolby Atmos, frame rate, HDR10, etc., it would be great to have the aspect ratio displayed as well. This would be especially useful for those using scope screens with projectors.
Problematic - most scope presentations are delivered in a 1.78:1 letterboxed frame so MediaInfo returns a DAR of 16:9.
Although not 100% accurate (although more accurate than MediaInfo), this info could be scraped from TMDB. It would definitely be useful for those of us with scope screens and matting setups. I vote to add!
An interesting conversation - but I think such a function is only useful if you can automate the process. It's probably fair to say that most individuals with a multi aspect masking screen (me included) have some form of room automation. Personally I use Crestron and it would probably take me 5 minutes and less than 5 lines of code to add aspect automation to my screen module. However, that requires feedback from the source, which would actually be possible with the Zidoo since it has 2-way RS232 and IP control (I use RS232 for robustness). The problem comes in the reliability of the source of the feedback. The information would have to be 100% fool proof 100% of the time otherwise the whole process becomes inelegant and therefore pointless. We obviously can't rely on mediaInfo for reasons stated above and also as stated above, we can't really rely on online resources because of different versions of the film - whether that's because of different deliverables being produced and listed (Scope, IMAX, HDTV or even Academy) or even because of human error. And the problem gets even more exacerbated the older the movies get - never mind Nolan and his VAR madness, what about Cinerama, Super Panavision, Todd-AO and the plethora of others! The best way to approach this is an outboard video processor to detect both SAR and masking bars. I believe Kaleidescape does this. I have to be honest though and say that although it would be nice to show aspect ratio on the info screen as well, I think this is of limited use with multi-aspect setups - personally I change screen masking (using presets) when a presentation starts and having prior knowledge of the aspect ratio from the info screen wouldn't change this - I certainly wouldn't change aspect on the info screen as this would look terrible and break the flow. Although, you could add aspect selection that only enables once you press <play> which would be a sort of halfway house to full automation, but it still requires 100% accurate information.
My matting process is only semi - automatic LOL... I have 4 ratios programmed into my HARMONY remote to use JVC's lens memories to maximize height. I then only have to manually "slide" my mattes in from the sides. While I love having a movie's audio codec/channel configuration in the info screen, I would submit that the aspect ratio info is even more important ahead of a watching a movie. Most people have their amps set to automatically adjust to whatever signal it receives and many, like myself will simply leave the upscale(?) option on regardless of the number of channels. Most would never dream of using any type of zoom function for the video so it is less of an automated thing than audio.
That's just DAR (Display Aspect Ratio) which for most presentations these days is the same as SAR (Storage Aspect Ratio) which is simply the aspect ratio of the file - exactly no use for what we're talking about here unless the video is cropped.
Just checked versions 3 and 4 of the TMDB API and unless I'm missing something, aspect ratio isn't part of the schema...
No, not from the file - there's nothing in the file that could tell Kodi about the letterboxed aspect ratio if it's a 16:9 file. My guess is IMDB - I assume it's exposed in their API (haven't looked) since it's part of the info on a movie's page.
Just had a look at the IMDB API and the documentation is terrible - can't even find a listing of query returns...
Have to be honest I'd like to see it too and particularly if the RS232 can feedback the aspect ratio, but I can't think of a reliable way of getting the information in there without manual intervention. Obviously suffixes could be used, or even add it to NFO files, but we moved away from suffixes for media information and not everybody uses NFOs.
If anybody is on a Kodi forum, it'd be interesting to ask a dev how they get the information - is it a plugin or does it do it by default?
