adding black to the sides of an image (windowboxing)

[maca]

What I want to do should be very simple, yet I can't quite get it to work with any of my video software (and I have a bunch like TMpegenc, etc.)

Here's my problem. I own a dvd that's 2.35:1. It is, however, an edited version of the movie. I also have a 1.85:1 version of the movie that doesn't look as good, but is uncut. I'd like to make a complete version by using mostly the 2.35, and adding the missing scenes from the 1.85. I don't want to crop the top and bottom of the 1.85 to make it 2.35; I'd lose too much info. I'd just like to re-encode the 1.85 with black on the sides so that it's windowboxed in a 2.35 frame. Therefore my finished movie will be 2.35, with black borders on the sides during the missing scenes.

I'm very familiar with re-encoding, resizing, cropping, all that. I've been fooling around with these kinds of programs for years. But I can't figure out how to simply ADD black to the sides of the frame, without changing the AR of what's already there. Seems it should be simple, but I'm not finding it. I could easily do it if I wanted to convert to .avi, since virtualdub has filters which can do this, but I want to keep it as mpg and just can't seem to do it. Anyone have a method for doing what I'm trying to do? It should be so easy, but I'm just not getting anything to work. A 1.85 image at the center of a 2.35 frame.

[maca]

Never mind, stupid question. I think I've figured out a way. I just have to change the vertical resolution of my 1.85 image so that it's the same height in my 16x9 frame as the 2.35 image is, and then change the horizontal resolution until I get what looks like the right AR back. I hate it when I think for hours on something, ask a question, then an answer comes to me before anyone even answers.

[aedipuss]

don't forget that dvd mpeg2 can only be 720x480/576.

[maca]

I'm setting my encoder for NTSC dvd standard mpg2 out. I'm just talking about shrinking the movie within that area so there's the proper amount of black to give me what I need. I'll of course have a 720x480 output, but the actual movie will be shrunken within that so it matches the height of the 2.35 parts, and has some black on the sides.