http://www.julesjordanvideo.com/movie/910/dredd's-devastation.html Can someone else download this trailer and tell me if the aspect ration is incorrect? It should be 16:9 but looks like it's 16:10. The faces and bodies of the performers look stretchered. Riley Reid in particular looks very thin in the face and to be honest it's not the first time I've noticed this with Jules Jordan scenes. It's very subtle but It really looks like the AR is out by a little. I don't notice it on any other source on my display, so It's not my settings. Is it all in y mind? I opened the file in MPC-HC and reduced the height by a few clicks and it looks much more natural. I even went to look at some of Riley's you tube vids to get a look at her face and she doesn't look that stretched/thin on those either.
I've noticed the same thing with what appears to be some vertical stretching. My theory is that he's capturing the scene in DCI 4k (which is a tiny bit wider) and then converting to UHD for release. This would would leave the vertical the same while compacting the horizontal.
What player are you using to watch? is it downloaded to your desktop, or are you watching on a television? Looking into this, but we're not seeing anything odd. Thanks!
I think this happened when he first started shooting/releasing 4K, but not for the last year or more. Actually, the "4K" releases were kept at their native resolutions/aspect ratio while everything else was 16:9. Taking a quick glance at the trailer and Riley's full scene, it might just be the effect of getting a bit too close with whatever lens is being used.
The pixel dimensions are separate from AR. You can have any resolution you want and it will not affect the AR if it is locked. It's very subtle and I only really notice it with Riley's scene because that girl's face is burned into my retina for many years. I think I'd notice if she had a freckle out of place... I shouldn't have said that. I should not have said that.
This is the corrected image of 854x450 And this the original 854x480 The top image looks more natural and familiar as how Riley looks elsewhere. Maybe it's just personal preference but the bottom picture looks stretched and un natural. Edited by - bangersandmash on 12/11/2017 7:07:12 PM
If this were barrel distortion you would be seeing a graduated level of warping from the center to the outer edges of the frame. In fact this would be more pronounced at the horizontal edges than the vertical ones (given that the screen is wider than it is tall). This is not what is being exhibited here. The horizontal resolution of DCI 4k is 4096 while UHD is 3840 (both vert remains 2160). This horizontal conversion from 4096 to 3840 would create a 6 or so % horizontal squeeze of the image. Which the images seem to show. Edited by - notmyrealname on 12/12/2017 6:14:06 AM Edited by - notmyrealname on 12/12/2017 6:15:31 AM
^ Aha! The jaw line. I was looking for something like that, where I could directly compare an angle or something. But I didn't notice the jaw line. Thanks. Now I see it. But, to be fair to JJV, it is very subtle.
This makes the most sense. Something is being "confused" in the conversion, but I think it's so subtle some people don't see it. It just reminded me of the old westerns when the film ended and the image would get stretched so everyone looked really tall and thin.
Hey all. I just noticed the technical issue raised in here and I'm glad someone mentioned it because I have also noticed it. I thought there was something askew about the aspect ratio I've noticed arise only this year. By cycling through the various aspect ratios, e.g. 4:3, 5:4, 16:9, 16:10, 2.21:1, etc I found that no other standard aspect ratios was a better fit to correct the slight deviation in the original videos. Changing from the original ratio only made it more distorted. So this means the distortion must be about 10%, and I agree something is off. It feels like it has the horizontal being compressed a bit, or to describe the same effect another way, the vertical seems to be stretched a bit.
BTW, Bangers, I concur with your assessment. I just wanted to point out for the record that those 2 snap shots of Riley are not exactly the same frame. But still, I do believe it demonstrates the stretching. Your adjusted frame looks properly corrected. It will probably be a real bitch for Jules to have to re-render and export all these movies, but I think it's the right call. We probably should have mentioned it sooner, but I only noticed it this year I think, no earlier. At least it is not like it affects the entire JJV library. It would seem to apply to just movies beginning early this year I think. I wonder if Jules got a new camera or more likely began using some new video editing software that exported videos at a peculiar ratio.
according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution, if the source is really DCI 4K, then the resulting video would have an aspect ratio of approximately 1.9:1 and ...pixels are cropped from the top or sides depending on the aspect ratio of the content being projected... So this means for a 16x9 output (on DVD, where onl 4x3 or 16x9 are allowed), this means the image should be cropped left and right to get to 384 hex 2160px and then downconvert to the desired resolution. Online video on the other hand is basically free in the aspect ratio, so the 4K videos could omit the cropping and show true 4096x2160 pixel video (and downscaled versions of that).
People have been pointing out for years that JJV's wholesale conversion of their back catalog of 4:3 scenes to 16:9 grievously marred the picture-quality of the resultant scenes. Nothing has ever been done to fix them. So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a correction on this issue guys.
^ I haven't noticed any distorted aspect ratio issues with any of those older vids they remastered on the site. And stretching a 4:3 to a 16:9 should have a huge and obvious impact, but I didn't see it. I think they probably upscaled for the HD remasters (or simply the HD codecs back in the early 2000s simply were not as good) and maybe cropped the top and bottom a bit to give the 16:9 ratio? In any case, it's obviously not the same issue.
^ Leaving aside the question of whether it is advisable or desirable to attempt to change a 4:3 picture to 16:9 in the first place (Hint: it's not), there are very noticeable distortion effects in the "improved" new versions of old scenes. JJV used some kind of non-linear upscaling/conversion process to make the center of the picture look kind of passable but the edges of the frame are all messed up. The distortion effects are very noticeable if you compare the same frames between the old and new versions. Here is a frame from the 4:3 standard definition version of Ass Worship 8 overlayed with 50% transparency over a frame from the distorted "improved" version: The 4:3 frame has been positioned so that the circled part of the shower is lined up and the same size. If the "improved" version had simply been scaled and cropped in a linear way, then everything else would line up and fall into place as well. That doesn't happen; the items that have been arrowed on the "improved" frame - the reflection of Mary Anne's arm, the male performer's head, and the light fixture - are stretched away towards the corner. It is a weird pincushion effect. No matter what you do with simple linear scaling, you cannot make these two frames look the same, which is proof that one of them is distorted in a non-linear way. Riley's slightly stretched jawline in the new Dredd scene is mildly perturbing; the above is just outright infuriating. And again, this stuff has been brought to JJV's attention many times and they apparently do not care. In this very thread Jules himself is insisting that there's nothing wrong with the new Riley scene! But hey, they may look into fixing it in the future. Like I said, don't hold your breath. Edited by - Mister Fahrenheit on 12/14/2017 2:24:41 AM
I'll take my 4x3 old titles over stretched 16x9 any day. And since I transfer all my videos to my HTPC anyway, I can do some aspect tinkering when transferring. For example with (I think Flesh hunter 7 or 8, where there are 16x9 (letterboxed) and 4x3 scenes on the DVD, I put them all together in one 16x9 video by adding side bars to the 4x3 video and removing the bars (and resizing) the 16x9 letterboxed video). In the 1.90:1 videos (i.e. the new 4K scenes) I might just add very small letterbox bars on top and bottom (as is the case with many Jonni Darkko vids from the beginning of 2017, IIRC. and be done with it.
It isn't just JJV, Legal Porno are displaying some of the same distortion in their scenes, which I assume were filmed with a 4K camera. A May Thai scene shows the same stretching. I won't bother with a pic as I think we have identified the issue now. But it is something producers should look into as they begin shooting with 4K cameras.
^^ Jules, speaking as a past member and possible a future member I have one question for you. Can you look at that image he made, specifically at Jerry's head, and HONESTLY say you see nothing wrong?
I'm not discussing 10 year old scenes.....we're always looking for better solutions for older 4:3 scenes, so theres a possibility we'll have another look. In my opinion when we converted this 4:3 to 1080 the minor flaws were worth it. Sorry, no ones jerking off to Jerrys head. Do a lot of you actually go back to watch scenes from 10 years ago? It is a great question, i'm very curious. I shoot in the maximum resolution 4096, when encoding this to conform to 3840 there is a very slight stretch. I've been shooting in this format for two years, no one has commented. Shit lots of companies aren't even shooting in 4K. We try to do our best to stay cutting edge. This slight issue is more apparent when viewing trailers, because of the smaller dimensions. Most people will not notice anything in full resolutions. We've done many broadcast deals with our content, they have very stringent specs and would have flagged this content had it been a bad issue.
^ Jules I promise I am not looking at Jerry's head to wank but it was an easily discernible example to give. I love the older scenes with Keri Sable, Teagan and those from that era. I am older than you so I still look to find watchable copis od Seka movies and the like. So for me the 10 year old scenes are one of the main reasons to be a member as it is much easier on the wallet than one off scene download at Adult DVD Empire, Gamelink or Hot Movies.
Hey Jules. To answer your question about whether anyone watches scenes from 10 years ago. My wife and I watch current scenes and old scenes from 10 years ago and even older than that. There was a lot of great porn made 10+ years ago.
So you admit that when people sign up for a membership for JJV they are to some extent buying a flawed product? That's not a good look. Why knowingly sell a product with any flaws at all? My proposed solution to this issue is pretty straightforward: Maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio when remastering the scenes to HD. A picture can be HD while maintaining its original aspect ratio. There's no rule that says they have to be 16:9. For example, Star Trek: The Next Generation was remastered to 1080p in its original 4:3 aspect ratio. The new versions have been universally praised by fans and have set the gold-standard for television series remasters going forward. Maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio would do away with all the distortion and cropping issues. And JJV could still advertise that all of their content is in HD. I guess some would regard the black bars on the sides of the picture as a drawback but I wouldn't be among them. I'd rather see the complete picture as originally intended minus any cropping or distortion. Barring that straightforward solution, a compromise for fans who value image quality would be to continue allowing the original versions of the scene to be downloaded in 480p. But now on the JJV site even the standard definition scenes have been put through this flawed conversion process. Paying members have no option on the site to see the scenes in their original quality at all.Because Jerry's head is the only thing that will occupy the periphery of the screen across all the releases that have gone through this process? Really? C'mon. Lots of stuff happens on the edges of the picture. Close-ups are a thing after all and you use them frequently. But if the edges of the picture are unimportant to JJV then perhaps they should start uploading scenes in a 15:32 aspect ratio: Looks great! And so long as it is up-scaled to 1080p I'm sure customers will have nothing to complain about! Jules, you make fantastic porn. You also made fantastic porn a decade ago. Just because it is old doesn't lessen the quality of it in the slightest. People such as myself still love it and would like to see it as it was when we first saw it. I mean, you obviously keep these scenes on the site because you think people are going to go back and watch them. If you didn't, why not just delete them and free up the server space?
The reason I don't think it's too big of a deal that they stretched the "vintage" 4:3 source material to 16:9 (although it is odd) is because I can easily adjust aspect ratio on either my video player or monitor to correct for this. The issue with the newer 4K source material having a discrepant issue is more problematic because out of 8 different standards, such as those I described before, none of them properly correct the issue. Here are all the standards in order of most square, 1:1, to the widest, 2.39:1 1:1 5:4 4:3 16:10 16:9 2.21:1 2.35:1 2.39:1 I wonder if the issue is that somewhere in the rendering process, the 4K source is being squished from 16:9 to 16:10, (possibly in the compression process to make the file sizes manageable for subscribers), before being exported back to 16:9. That could account for the 10% distortion. I'm quite sure of it now. Somewhere in the process of converting the raw 4K source to, it is being converted to 16:10. We know that the final step has the correct 16:9 ratio, because that's how the trailers are coming out to 854 x 480. That's 16:9 widescreen standard ratio. But either the 4K source is capturing at a 16:10 ratio OR somewhere in your compression process it is being converted to 16:10, before being exported at 16:9 for trailers. You may just want to double-check all your presets for exporting/rendering so they are all 16:9. I have a strong suspicion that somewhere in the process there is a 16:10 sneaking in. Anyhow, Jules, know that I'm still a big fan and thanks to all your great work this year cranking out the Massacre and Dredd joints, I am keen on re-subscribing. You still have my support, I just hope this feedback can help you out. You still da man Jules!
We're aware of whats causing it, and working on it. You seem like a bit of a technophile, why do you think you haven't noticed this previously? Again this issue is only amplified in trailers. Thanks man....
Just popping in here to say I always found it incomprehensible why anyone would want to stretch 4:3 videos to 16:9. JJ have not been alone in doing that. The whole point of recoding older material is to make it look better, not to make it look distorted, no? When I watch the older recoded scenes I downloaded from JJ and other sites I always use VLC to adjust the aspect ratio back to the original 4:3, but why should I have to do that? I really appreciate recoding older classic material, there is a lot of good stuff there. I think sites who keep a library of older scenes in good quality show that they care about their backlog and viewers. But keep the original aspect ratio please!
Adjusting the distorted 16:9 picture back to 4:3 using your media player might make it look a little better but as demonstrated by my frame comparison post it won't make the picture look the same as the original unaltered 4:3 version. Here's the relevant passage again:
Perhaps true for the JJV stuff, but most "stretched" porn videos are simply distorted in linear fashion by the wrong aspect ratio being used during the encode - usually by companies trying to standardize their downloadable files. One depressing example is Reality Kings who screwed up most of their 4:3 back catalog that way a few years ago when they re-encoded all their old WMV stuff to MP4. JJV seems to have done something rather peculiar there, although it's arguably not much of an improvement on the standard way of screwing up 4:3 material. E for effort, as they say. Edited by - shalalin on 12/17/2017 2:13:51 PM
^ Yeah, I'm only discussing the JJV scenes. If there was an easy media player fix to the problems with those scenes they would be a lot less objectionable. Edited by - Mister Fahrenheit on 12/17/2017 2:32:55 PM
That's great to hear! Thanks.Well I actually did notice it somewhere around the beginning of this year. I want to say that I did mention it previously somewhere in the JJV thread, but maybe I forgot to ask about it. And again, it must be subtle, or else you'd have heard a lot more people bringing it up. Doing the math of 3840/4096 or 4096/3840, the disparate percentages come to 6.25% and 6.67% respectively. So remember, if you want to stretch the compressed image back to the original width, you have to stretch by +6.67%. It was originally compressed horizontally by -6.25%. In either case, whether you stretch the horizontal by +06.67% or +06.25%, it should get you to the original aspect ratio or 99.9% of it.
I may have been wrong on that when I said 10%. It could be more close to 6.5%. At least they are looking into it. I believe it is probably one of the presets for exporting/rendering being at something like a 16:10 ratio.
Cant vouch for the average gonzo consumer but personally, I am always watching older material mixed in with the newer material. I even watch porn shot as far back as the early 90's. For further information, this was about a decade before I actually started watching. early 90's seems to be when the first decent anal focused porn started being produced. In Jules defense, I feel that his later scenes shot in 4k look great. I personally watch them in 1080 as I have not seen a reason to fork out money on a 4k screen. However downsized to 1080 the 4k shot scenes actually now look proper 1080, unlike the ones shot in 1080p. This seems to be the case with most videos shot in 1080p and formatted for the internet. I am guessing this is because there is a big reduction in video quality taking place to get the movies in a format which is sizeable to download and stream, yet being shot in 4k allows the raw footage to go through a lot of compression without a noticeable drop in quality. I am not very clued up on these matters however so maybe someone else can explain this to me. Also in reference to the aspect ratio issue, I have only just become aware of their technicality. Partly through reading this thread, haha. However, I agree with others on this thread that stretching of the image is not good. I actually had a bunch of old Rocco scenes in my collection, downloaded from evil angel's network. The stretching of these videos was always an issue I had with watching them, however, I didn't realize until now that it was an aspect ratio thing and that there was a simple fix through VLC player. BTW does anyone know the focal length at which Jules has shot his scenes? Focal length has recently become an interest of mine after playing around on an interchangeable lens camera and so now when I watch porn I am always interested in what focal length or lengths were used.
I am a current member of the site, because the quality of the scenes, for my personal taste, is level best with a small handful of other sites. However, the technical issues are bothersome. I'd not noticed the one raised with the new scenes, though I agree that the "corrected" version *looks* right. The issue that Mr. F raises, though, with the older scenes, has been bothering me for some time; I just hadn't been able to put my finger on precisely what it was that didn't look right until now. To the question, *most* of what I watch is at least 5-10 years old (and will remain so, as long as Candy Manson continues to be retired ;-) ). Incidentally, if we're putting it to a vote, I'm strongly in the camp of keeping scenes that were originally 4x3, as 4x3 after remastering. Edited by - ISD88 on 6/17/2018 12:33:12 AM
Yeah, I, not a fan of stretching the original aspect ratio either. However, it has to be said that Jules has pushed the quality of his old archived content more than most websites out there. I mean it would be nice if some other websites out there could remaster their old content so it was at least close to dvd quality.
Agreed. Like I said, JJV is firmly in the top tier of companies IMO. It's just that in this case, the stretching to 16x9 is a total non-starter for me. You distort the image, making it sometimes hard to watch, and hope to gain what, exactly?
^ I'm groaning internally as I type this, but in JJV's defense this could conceivably be a smart business move. When I was a teenager I worked at a DVD store and the number of customers who insisted on buying the so-called "full screen" versions of DVDs as opposed to the correct widescreen versions always shocked me. When customers asked me to explain the difference I would tell them in non-technical terms that the full screen versions were cropping out parts of the frame, adding unnecessary panning effects, etc. Even after I explained why it was inferior many people still opted for the full screen version because they hated those, "little black bars" at the top and bottom. Flash forward 20 some-odd years and people have the same reaction to bars on the sides. If their screen isn't completely filled they feel like they're getting ripped off. So yeah, unfortunately there is market for people who like to watch their movies incorrectly. However, my admittedly anecdotal impression of porn fans is that there are a significant number of customers who are savvy about these issues and care about them a great deal. Ideally JJV would find a way to cater to both markets.
^ well, in an ideal world, the "Pan&Scan" information on the DVD could already have worked wonders. It contains the movie in letterbox, but tells the player how to zoom (and pan) for a 4x3 fullscreen image. I imagine with modern technology, this could go far beyond the limited scope of original DVDs, but since it's all files on computers anymore, there is no single standard anymore. I mean all these transformations, zoomings (even non-linear etc.) are all a piece of cake for modern imaging processors found even in the simplest devices. Also, I find the dismissive attitude towards 10 year old scenes rather odd. I find myself going back to many of those old scenes. But yeah, I also watch movies that are older than 5 months on the TV (or the Cinema - guess what, my tickets for the 50th anniversary of "2001: A Space Odyssey" are already bought) - I don't see why that shouldn't apply for "classic" porn scenes (especially if they are part of my "porn upbringing" (so to speak). And noone would want a fullscreen version of 2001. No. Single. Person.
Jules Jordan @ AEBN
Posted - Dec 10 2017 : 5:55PM
Looks great! And so long as it is up-scaled to 1080p I'm sure customers will have nothing to complain about! 
Jules, you make fantastic porn. You also made fantastic porn a decade ago. Just because it is old doesn't lessen the quality of it in the slightest. People such as myself still love it and would like to see it as it was when we first saw it. I mean, you obviously keep these scenes on the site because you think people are going to go back and watch them. If you didn't, why not just delete them and free up the server space?