Samsung Camcorder Aspect Ratio Fix

I picked up this Camcorder, spare battery and case for £90 from Amazon after our main camcorder died.  I felt it was a bargain.  And it was, until I went to edit the footage.

So what is the problem?  Well, there are several.  Some are excusable, such as have an interlaced image, it’s a cheap camcorder, it stores stuff in a way to get loads of footage onto a memory card, I can live with that.

The main stumbling block is that if you try to play the footage back in any program other than the software that is supplied with the camera, then it is unlikely to display correctly.  Additionally, the files cannot be edited in many of the popular video editing suites as firstly the aspect ratio is wrong, and secondly the internal format of the MP4 file can cause problems.

There are two steps that need to be applied to each MP4 file, thankfully both a drag-and-drop once your machine is configured.

You’ll need these two bits of free software:

• MP4Box Version 0.4.4
• Super ©

Okay, so now on to the problem … this is what a native MP4 file generated on the Samsung Camcorder looks like, not good at all, and very squashed.

Now if all you want to do is to is playback the file and not edit it, then running MP4Box program against the video file will fix the issue.  More info on how to apply the fix is in this YouTube Video (please expand the comments to see the fix) or refer to this copy and paste from the YouTube in case the video is deleted:

    Install MP4box and use this batch file:

    @ECHO OFF
    :LOOP
    “E:Program FilesYambmp4box.exe” -par 1=64:45 %1
    SHIFT
    IF [%1]==[] GOTO END
    GOTO LOOP
    :END

    Replace the path to mp4box as appropriate.

    Then just drag and drop files to be fixed onto the bat file.

Now the file will play back like this in Quicktime

This is much better.

If you want to use the MP4 file in an Editing Suite, your Editing Suite may not be able handle the file correctly even after the fix to the aspect ratio.  So the next stage is to use the program called Super © to take the file and give it a good talking to and make the bits and bytes line up in a correct and understandable format.

So start up Super ©, and then set up Super ©  as per the example below (click to zoom in) and drag and drop your video file(s) into the drop-bucket at the bottom of the screen, then click ‘Encode’.

Super © will take the MP4 video and audio file, and without changing the video or audio contents, fix the incorrect formatting within the file to allow it to be used within many popular Video Editing Suites.

Couple of tips – always back up your original video files into a safe place before editing … and allow plenty of time for the various programs to fix the files.