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  1. Member
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    Does anyone know a fast program that converts widescreen to fullscreen? I have total video convert and Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate, but both of them take well over 4 hours to fully convert. It would be a plus if the program allows you to add subtitle files as well, but no one can get there way all the time so its fine if it doesnt. thank you
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  2. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    What format are they in? That determines which type of program to recommend. Gspot will tell you. But to do that type of conversion, you will have to re-encode the video. That will take some time, depending on the video type and encoder used. And it will also result in some quality loss. That depends on what encoder settings you use and what filesize you want.

    You have two main choices for resizing. One is to letterbox the video by adding black bars to shrink the video to the size of a full screen. The picture will be smaller. Another is to crop off both sides to create a full screen view. If the action isn't in the center, it will be off screen. A variant is called 'Pan and Scan'. That takes quite a bit of work selecting what part of the wide screen to save. That's how they do it for TV display.

    I would recommend letter boxing.

    And welcome to our forums.
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  3. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    And you are converting to what??? 4 hours isn't that much if you are for example converting a 2hour video to for example h264 video.

    You can use both avidemux and xvid4psp(FREE tools) to crop to fullscreen, add subtitles and convert to xvid,h264,mpeg2 dvd. But I don't think you will notice any huge difference in converting speed.
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    thank you very much for the info
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  5. If your material is DV and you mean you want to go from true 16:9 to letterboxed 4:3 and you are using Windows XP or later, our free software will do that faster than realtime (even on a 5 year old 1.5GHz single core laptop).

    If you are trying to go from letterboxed and remove the bars and the top and bottom, that's a different process.

    Whichever way and whatever software you choose, if you have interlaced material, make sure any scaling is done properly (i.e., field based), otherwise the results will look terrible.

    Re subtitles, do you mean open (burned onto the video) or closed (optionally displayed by the player/TV)?
    John Miller
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    i meant hardcoded into the video or whatever. thanks a lot
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  7. What format are your files (MPEG2, WMV, DV etc)?

    What exactly do you mean by widescreen to fullscreen? There are a number of things that could describe:

    1. You have a true widescreen video that has no black bars on it and looks right on a widescreen TV. You want to preserve the full horizontal extent of the video but watch it on a conventional 4:3 TV - i.e., add the horizontal black bars (by squishing).

    2. You have a letterboxed video it already has the black bars so it can be watched on a 4:3 TV without looking skinny and you want to do away with the bars but still watch it on a 4:3 TV. i.e., you have to chop the sides off and magnify the middle.

    3. You have a video with black bars on the sides so that something intended for 4:3 can be watched on a 16:9 TV without looking fat and you want to watch it on a 4:3 TV. i.e., you need to chop the sides off and stretch it horizontally.

    4. You have a letterboxed video for viewing on a 4:3 TV and you want to watch it on a 16:9 TV fullscreen - i.e., chop the top and bottom bars off and then stretch it vertically.

    (Phew!)
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    the files are avi and number 1 is what i would like.
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  9. One more...what specific video format (AVI is a generic term) - e.g., did you capture the files from a MiniDV camcorder?
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  10. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    Use g-spot or media info to find out what type of compression is being used in the AVI files. Compression is determined by the codec used, and influences what software you will need.
    Read my blog here.
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    ok according to mediainfo its MPEG-4 visual (divx5) and the audio is MPEG audio (MP3)
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  12. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    Virtualdub or AVIDemux, or avisynth. You will have to crop off both ends of the image to get the image to fill the screen (will make it small), or simply stretch it (will look ugly).

    What is theresolution of the video ?
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    thanks a lot for all the help, i really appreciate it. the resolution is 628x254, i think. sorry to take up all your time on something stupid like this. ill be sure try it out as soon as i can.
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  14. Always Watching guns1inger's Avatar
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    You would have to crop 144 pixels off the left, and 144 off the right. This leaves you with a postage stamp sized video of 340 x 254, but it will be full screen (pan and scan butchered). From there you can scale it however you need to.

    (Actually, to be more accurate, you need to crop 144 off one side, and 146 off the other)
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  15. You'll be hacking something like this:



    into this:

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  16. Member MysticE's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by F8L23
    Does anyone know a fast program that converts widescreen to fullscreen? I have total video convert and Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate, but both of them take well over 4 hours to fully convert. It would be a plus if the program allows you to add subtitle files as well, but no one can get there way all the time so its fine if it doesnt. thank you
    If you are converting an AVI to DVD, ConvertXtoDVD 3 will do what you want. You can try it's various presets or adjust manually.
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