How much to crop off to make 16:9 from 4:3?

[Rogue3]

I've been cropping off 128 (64 top 64 bottom) pixels total from my videos to make them anamophic. Recently I read that you crop off 120 (60 top 60 bottom). Which one is correct?

Also, does it hurt anything to crop off more from one side or the other (I find more useless info at the bottom than the top so have cropped 60 top 68 bottom on occation).

[Roderz]

Mmmm
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=174200

[FulciLives]

For NTSC you would cut 60 off of the top and 60 off of the bottom.

For PAL you would cut 72 off of the top and 72 off of the botom.

Either way after you do that you then resize to full height (480 for NTSC and 576 for PAL)

The other option is to cut off ALL of the black above and below the image THEN resize the image THEN add black to the image.

Example: A NTSC 4:3 DVD with an aspect raito of 2.35:1

Most movies that have an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 will have a resolution of 720x272 after you crop ALL of the black. You stretch this (resize it) to 720sx360 then add 60 black to the top and 60 black to the bottom. You now have a 720x480 16:9 NTSC DVD image that IS anamorphic but also retains the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

I do it the first way (in an AviSynth AVS script) then when I re-encode in TMPGEnc I use the MAK feature of the CLIP function to mask any additional black because when you cut 60 off the top and bottom you will have some remaining black from the original 4:3 widescreen IF the movie is wider than 1.777:1

As far as clipping more from the top than the bottom ... you can do this but your image will not be centered (unless it wasn't centered before and you are trying to fix that ... I had to do that once) but make sure you only do even numbers ... such as 60 or 62 or 64 or 58 or 56 etc. So you could clip say 68 from the bottom and 52 from the top but again this would make the image appear LOWER on the screen instead of centering it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[BJ_M]

just mentioning that all these sizing guides (and lots of good ones) re-size the video to the edges -- which means that if you watch it on a tv -- you are losing 10% of your picture ..

its not a bad idea to reduce the picture area by 10% all around for safe area so you can watch the whole thing if so inclined .

[energy80s]

However OVERSCAN varies for TV to TV, and is non-existant on PC monitors and projectors. So don't put a border around something unless you don't mind watching black lines around your pictures on some displays.

[Rogue3]

Thanks for the replies. I'm actually cropping my home videos. I haven't been resizing them back to 480 after cropping them, i've just been cropping them in thmpenc while encoding them to m2v, then importing them into maestro and adding the 16:9 flag. They've been turning out pretty good from what I could tell (although I think i've been cutting off 128 instead of 120). After encoding them how do you resize them?

[BJ_M]

However OVERSCAN varies for TV to TV, and is non-existant on PC monitors and projectors. So don't put a border around something unless you don't mind watching black lines around your pictures on some displays.

as i said -- when watching on a tv , which a lot of people do ..

the overscan amount is standardized (well supposed to be) .. using 9 or 10% is fine .....

[FulciLives]

as i said -- when watching on a tv , which a lot of people do ..

the overscan amount is standardized (well supposed to be) .. using 9 or 10% is fine .....

Please don't take this as any disrespect but the overscan is different from TV to TV although it usually is close to around 10% with most televisions THERE is another thing to consider. One TV might chop less off the left hand side than the other 3 sides where another TV might chop less off the bottom or less off the top or whatever. Usually there is at least one of the four sides that might have less than 10% overscan. So one TV might show just a touch of black along the left where another might show a touch along the right where most will probably not show any at all.

It's kind of hit or miss that way.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[energy80s]

Yes, my TV has no overscan on the top and bottom but about 15% on the left and right. You are best not to mess around with this and just leave it the way the broadcasters intended.