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  1. Member
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    I have a PAL DVD which is letterbox and I wish to it blow-up to 16:9.

    The original film ratio inside the letterbox is 1:85.

    What I don't remember is which were the numbers to load in resize and in add-borders to convert it with Avisynth.
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    Last edited by carlmart; 28th Apr 2012 at 12:49.
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  2. Crop about 80 lines off the top and bottom. Resize back to 576 lines.
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    OK. Let me see if I got it right. Resizing would be:

    Crop(0,80,0,-80)
    Lanczos4Resize(720,576)

    Is that so?
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  4. Yes. That should remove the black borders (you may have to crop unevenly if the picture isn't centered) but give you a slightly too tall image (stretched from 1.85 to 1.78). If you want a more perfect aspect ratio crop 72 top and bottom, then resize back to 576 lines. Small black borders will remain at the top and bottom.
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    Thanks. Resizing seems to look fine on the short test I just made.

    Now some further questions:

    1) Lanczos or Spline for resize?

    2) What enhancement might be tried to improve image a little bit? Grain went up a bit, as is expected.

    I just tried "lsfmod(smode=5)", and it does seem to improve borders a bit, but that is deceiving sometimes if it gets too "video-like" instead of "film like".

    Not much experience with grain removers.
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  6. Member DB83's Avatar
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    And there I was thinking here was a topic about mail-bombs.

    I had done the crop/resize trick myself before - 72 lines top and bottom for PAL, 60 (IIRC) top and bottom for NTSC.

    Yet a few things puzzle me. When you remove 144 lines from 576 you are left with 432. 720/432 = 1.666 which is not 16:9. So what gives here ?

    Also if you have an mpeg2 interlaced source surely you have to de-interlace first. But I have done this with an interlaced DV source and it worked fine without de-interlacing ??????
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  7. If the letterbox aspect is dead on 1.85:1 then DVD Rebuilder Pro may work for you. There's an AviSynth setting to blow the movie up to 16x9 from LetterBox. I don't have it installed at the moment to look at the settings. But there's a check box in that section that will cause it to size up the image. I tried it on a few DVDs. If the source is 1.85:1 it sized up with aspect ratio looking OK. Just the image seemed a bit softer. Not as sharp as postage stamp. That's why I stopped using it.

    Alternatively you may try using FitCD to do the calculations for you:

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/237369-xvid-to-DVD-resolution-and-aspect-ratio-woes...=1#post1395158
    http://milesaheadsoftware.org/
    Fully enabled freeware for Windows PCs.
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    The problem with most programs I've tried for this is that they are not too good when adding subtitles.

    Which is the other reason for blowing up my letterbox DVDs.

    After I blow it up with HCEnc I use DVDLab Pro for authoring, and it's very flexible on the font type, size and positioning of the subtitles.
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  9. Originally Posted by DB83 View Post
    When you remove 144 lines from 576 you are left with 432. 720/432 = 1.666 which is not 16:9. So what gives here ?
    You're thinking square pixels, which DVDs aren't.
    Also if you have an mpeg2 interlaced source surely you have to de-interlace first.
    Well, deinterlace if you mean bob deinterlace, before then cropping, resizing, and reinterlacing, something like:


    Yadif(Mode=1)
    Crop(0,72,0,-72)
    LanczosResize(Width,576)
    SeparateFields()
    SelectEvery(4,0,3)
    Weave()
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  10. Originally Posted by DB83 View Post
    Yet a few things puzzle me. When you remove 144 lines from 576 you are left with 432. 720/432 = 1.666 which is not 16:9. So what gives here ?
    The pixels in the source AVI aren't square, they are 16:15 SAR. 1.666 * 16 / 15 = 1.777.
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  11. Member DB83's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Originally Posted by DB83 View Post
    Yet a few things puzzle me. When you remove 144 lines from 576 you are left with 432. 720/432 = 1.666 which is not 16:9. So what gives here ?
    The pixels in the source AVI aren't square, they are 16:15 SAR. 1.666 * 16 / 15 = 1.777.
    Ahh. !!!
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  12. Originally Posted by carlmart View Post
    The problem with most programs I've tried for this is that they are not too good when adding subtitles.

    Which is the other reason for blowing up my letterbox DVDs.

    After I blow it up with HCEnc I use DVDLab Pro for authoring, and it's very flexible on the font type, size and positioning of the subtitles.
    Yeah, I find subs the limiting factor in most cases. It can be frustrating. There are many "one click" converters that work well until you have to deal with subs. In most cases if I have the .srt subs then I'll convert to idx/sub using AviAddXSubs since both my set top box and DVD player will load external idx/sub files. I have WD set top box and the .srt support is horrible. The largest font and border thickness are still small, thin and hard to read. At least with AviAddXSubs I can play around with fonts and settings, even if I am limited to black white and gray by WD.
    http://milesaheadsoftware.org/
    Fully enabled freeware for Windows PCs.
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    First of all, let me tell you that I went ahead and blew-up the film using spline and lsfmod filters. It turned up beautiful.

    Decided not to use any grain removers, as I think that might have been part of the DP intention, to make it grainy.

    About the subtitles, I do recommend DVDLab Pro for authoring DVDs if you want versatility with subs. It allows a lot of small details.

    Pity there's no way of fixing details on the srt file itself, because it's just a text file.

    About the WD box you talk about, you mean WDTV Live box?

    If that's so it's interesting, because in 2009 I was about to buy a WDTV Live in the US, just released, but couldn't find one. So I came back with an LG BD390, which is a BD player and a media center. Later on I planned on buying the WDTV. Never did.

    The LG turned out to be great and even if the subtitles are just one type for streaming stuff, the size is small just the way I want it. From what I could find out on WDTV forums here, the subs are too large for me and do not allow too much correction.

    Subs seem to be designed for smaller screens that the ones used now for HD, so they end up being too large and too invasive.
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  14. I have the Generation One WD HDTV for USB. It's not Live just USB2 input. It was only on the last firmware update that support for idx/sub was added. No more firmware updates will be written since they want to sell another box just to get updated features. I haven't had an opportunity to use the newer releases of the box. The main consolation I have is a user review where the guy claimed to own both Gen1 and Gen2 WD box. He said the HD upscaling in Gen1 is superior. It does look good. I've played SD avi that was captured HDTV downsized to SD, upscaled on the WD that looked crystal clear. If the .avi is HD it usually looks great. Likewise with .mp4 .mkv .m4v etc.. It has its quirks. Audio tracks it's happy to play in one container it may squawk about playing in another. I have to make sure the audio bitrates are considered "compliant" when I stick something in another container as a quick fix for unsupported audio(DTS.) The other downside of the Gen1 is there's no downmix of DTS to stereo. If I have an .mkv with DTS I have to put it through something like MKV2AC3 or MkvToMp4.

    Of course I have Sony Wega 1080i HDTV that's only 27" diagonal screen. So flaws aren't blown way up. Still, the video quality is fantastic if you have a good looking source.
    Last edited by MilesAhead; 1st May 2012 at 16:02.
    http://milesaheadsoftware.org/
    Fully enabled freeware for Windows PCs.
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