Anyone else notice the opening movie's aspect ratio is off? I can't tell whether it's supposed to be 4:3, but it should certainly be taller/less wide than it is. I wonder at what stage it got borked up?

The aspect ratio should be 16:9. It displays properly for me. Are you seeing something different?

Even with the game running at 1280x720, which has an aspect ratio of 16:9, the movie is letterboxed on my computer. I took a screenshot and the movie is displaying at 1280x600 (two black bars 60 pixels tall each). That works out to 32:15 (or 16:7.5 to put it in terms easily comparable to 16:9).

However, it's not that I have something against the movie not being 16:9 if that's how it's intended to be. But I don't think 32:15 is the correct aspect ratio for this video... everyone looks squashed and even the circular device behind the logo is squashed.

Does anyone know if the game has FMV cutscenes throughout or if it's just the opening? I don't mind much if it's just the opening.

Oh, I see what you mean now. I had loaded up the video file in VLC and it was fine there, but it does seem like the game does letterbox it.

There's the opening cutscene and a couple at the end, but otherwise no videos in between.

Cool thanks. As I say, I have no actual problem with letterboxing but it looks to me like the video might not actually need letterboxing (at least when the game is set to a 16:9 resolution). I'll have to check it out in VLC later.

The videoes are definitely encoded in 16:9 aspect ratio, but by default, the game's code has videos set to run at the original aspect ratio of 4:3. Apparently, XSEED couldn't or didn't change the aspect ratio limit on the videos.

It's not 4:3, it's something between 4:3 and 16:9.

I opened the videos directly in a tool called MediaInfo. It shows the exact data of how any video is encoded. Here is the data for the opening video:

General
Complete name : C:\GOG Games\The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky\ed6_op.avi
Format : MPEG-PS
File size : 103 MiB
Duration : 3mn 20s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 4 314 Kbps
Writing library : encoded by TMPGEnc (ver. 2.524.63.181)

Video
ID : 224 (0xE0)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 1
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Custom
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=18
Duration : 3mn 20s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 3 972 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 30.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.144
Time code of first frame : 00:00:00:00
Time code source : Group of pictures header
GOP, Open/Closed : Open
GOP, Open/Closed of first f : Closed
Stream size : 94.8 MiB (92%)
Writing library : TMPGEnc 2.524.63.181

Audio
ID : 192 (0xC0)
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 2
Duration : 3mn 20s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 6.11 MiB (6%)

The videos are literally encoded to a 16:9 aspect ratio at exactly 720p. The game engine is probably what restricts it in-game to make it look the way it does.

This was actually fixed in later Steam patches of the game, so it will be in the new GOG patch.

I wasn't doubting that the videos were 16:9, I did a lot of investigation into this shortly after I made the thread. I was saying that it wasn't 4:3 that the game played them back at, but something between 4:3 and 16:9.

EDIT: Just looked up my findings in the corresponding thread that I made in the Steam forums. The game is displaying the movies in 32:15, which for easier comparison is 16:7.5. So in other words the videos are being played at 5/6ths the height they should be.

Are you 100% sure? Because there have already been false alarms there:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/251150/discussions/0/618460171325829542/

EDIT: Wait, are you Sara from Xseed? If so, I guess I'd better believe you! The last time I asked on the Steam forums I got mixed messages about whether it was fixed but can't see for myself until the patch comes here.

I will say that the movies DO have baked-in black bars, mind; Falcom seems to like them as a cinematic touch or something, and when they're removed, there's either nothing there or glitchy flickering, so I ended up restoring them when I made the videos 1080p. The videos themselves at 16:9 when treating the bars as part of the video at least, with how they are in the current Steam version.

That's odd... the file for the opening movie in my GOG version is exactly 16:9 (1280x720) with no black bars. When you say baked in, do you mean baked in to the game's playback code? Or am I seeing something different because the GOG version is behind on patches?

EDIT: Attached screengrabs of what I see when they're played in VLC. Perfect 16:9 (i.e. circles are circular) with no black bars. VLC's codec information agrees with ragnawing's findings.

It is probably an in-engine thing, since it is possible to control videos within a game's engine.

Ok, I have the latest version now and I see the baked in black bars in the raw video files now... but they weren't there in the old 720p videos. Unfortunately, video playback in the game seems to be broken so I can't actually see how the game plays them because it crashes...