cropping

[exekutive]

I'm trying to convert an ASF file to MPEG2 for authoring in Toast. The video has black bars on the top and bottom I want to crop out as well. I need to use the mpeg2enc for compatibility with Toast but it seems that encoder grays out the cropping options in the filter tab.

[exekutive]

Can anyone confirm whether or not it is possible to crop when using mpeg2enc?

[Case]

Mine doesn't allow cropping with mpeg2enc either.

What you could try is encoding (and cropping) with ffmpeg. IIRC, the result won't be elementary streams, so you'll need to demux. I prefer MPEG Streamclip over ffmpegX for demuxing, as I sometimes get non-working results with the latter.
Then use the elementary streams in Toast (drop the video on Toast's window, let Toast find the audio). When using elementary streams, suddenly Toast plays nice - crazy, eh?

[exekutive]

OK I tried this and got more frustrated.

My source is 4:3 PAL video... well actually the film is 16:9 and somebody has letterboxed it to fit a standard screen. I'm trying to remove the letterboxing.

This time I chose the ffmpeg encoder (for later demuxing).
I set the output to NTSC and DVD 16:9.
I set to decode with QT ('letterbox' unchecked) to handle the PAL->NTSC conversion.
Result: still letterboxed

I tried turning the QT letterboxing option ON.
Result: letterboxed AND pillarboxed

Only when I turned QT decoding OFF was the film properly cropped. Luckily, it seems to play OK. If the source were some more exotic codec, I may not have been so lucky. Does this mean one cannot crop AND decode with QT? Also, using the ffmpegx decoder, one cannot set 3:2 flags, which means demuxing afterwards, something which ffmpegx doesn't do very well.

Am I doing something wrong, or just running into a lot of app limitations?

[exekutive]

OK that last post was when I used an DX5 AVI source, and as I said, I got lucky.

I tried your method with the original ASF file I posted about and my suspicions were confirmed...
I get codec errors converting this file with QT decoding turned off.
If I turn QT decoding on, the conversion goes fine except that no cropping is performed.

[Case]

Am I running into app limitations?

Yeah, some limitations apply. Worst case scenario, you could encode twice with different engines for different features.