WTF? 16:9 movies that are 4:3

[F-ING HOSTILE]

Hi- I recently purchased a HDTV widescreen TV, and made a sad discovery. I have found that several of my favorite widescreen DVD's (that I could not wait to watch on a widescreen set), seem to be encoded as 4:3. These movies displayed properly on a Standard TV set (retaining their true aspect ratios), but when viewed on a widescreen television, looked exactly the same as before (with large black bars at top and bottom for the 2.35:1 movie, and thin black bars for the 1.85:1), only
stretched sideways (rather than filling most or all of the 16:9 screen). I searched the forums for posts discussing similar problems, but found few (none that really answered my questions, anyway). I imagine that since the problem only occurs on widescreen TV's, and that since the majority of people most likely have standard, there has not been much discussion about this particular issue.

The problem seems to be mainly with older movies. "Dazed and Confused", "Top Gun", and "Boondock Saints" are among the few I have discovered already. I thought I might be able to make backups of these movies, and correct the problem. When I check the DVD's in DVD Decrypter (IFO-Stream Processing)it says they are "720x480(NTSC)4:3".
DVD2AVI (preview) also says 4:3. It seems that when these movies were put to DVD, they encoded them as 4:3, manually inserting the black bars, rather that labeling them 16:9 and letting the dvd player insert the letterboxing. I tried to encode with CCE as 16:9, and chose a widescreen setting when authoring with DVD Maestro, but to no avail!

Does anyone know how I might be able to correct this problem, and get DVD's such as these to display correctly on a Widescreen television?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[AngusMacGyver]

If your DVDs are 4:3 encoded, there's no way. But, notice that anamorphic movies have black borders even if they are 16:9. A way to remove black borders is by using Zoom feature of DVD player. It will cut off the black borders. If your movie is windowed on screen, I think it will be shown better with zoom.

[dwisniski]

You have two choices:

You can use the zoom feature of your HDTV to expand the 4:3 movie you want to watch, and that will give you the option of having the movie look closer to the original aspect ratio on a widescreen TV, but generally with a small loss of quality.

Your other option is to re-encode and anamorphically resize the movie by stretching it out vertically until the black bars disappear, and make sure you select the 16:9 aspect ratio in your encoding program. I believe there are several posts/guides on this site which inform you on how to do this. Do a search. Hope this helps.

[F-ING HOSTILE]

If your DVDs are 4:3 encoded, there's no way. But, notice that anamorphic movies have black borders even if they are 16:9. A way to remove black borders is by using Zoom feature of DVD player. It will cut off the black borders. If your movie is windowed on screen, I think it will be shown better with zoom.

You can use the zoom feature of your HDTV to expand the 4:3 movie you want to watch, and that will give you the option of having the movie look closer to the original aspect ratio on a widescreen TV, but generally with a small loss of quality.

Thanks for the replys!!
I have used the zoom view to correct this problem(when watching a 1.85:1 movie), but it diminishes the video quality slightly, as well as cutting off a small portion of the video on top and bottom.

I would really like to find a way to remake the movie, and get the video to display properly. I was thinking perhaps I could cut off the borders with an AviSynth script, then encode the M2V as 16:9. Unfortunately, I'm not an AviSynth expert yet. I mainly use it for frameserving, and simple resizes.

[cksmoooth]

Resizing a letterboxed 16:9 movie to an anamorphic 16:9 one will not improve the picture quality in any way - the logical vertical resolution will essentially be exactly the same, whether it's resized with a filter or not.

There is not much that can be done in this situation apart from watch the movies in zoomed mode - not a 2x zoom, which will look awful, but most widescreen tellys have an aspect-ration setting which will stretch the picture vertically. However, some widescreen letterboxed movies are STILL letterboxed when you use a vertical zoom - look at the terrible print of The Last Emperor (R2), surely one of the worst examples of DVD transfer known to man.

If I remember correctly, you can set a flag on the video to tell the DVD player what aspect ration to use regardless of the resolution of the video, and most TVs will automatically zoom the picture depending on this flag. It would need to be changed after you rip the DVD, and edited with IFOedit - try a search on the forum for more info.

[vhelp]

dude f-ing...

Wait a minute.. I think I know what you mean. But, sometimes, you have
to ignore those sofware info screens are telling ya, cause in reality, they
were developed by humans, and humans do make mistakes.. even in the
programming world

I was getting at the 4:3 look. I bought the DVD movie of the first Batman.
It was a Widscreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, BUT it would only play fullscreen
4:3 on my cheap 13" TV

Out of shear messing around w/ my DVD player (had nothing to do w/ the
movie) I found a feature in my DVD player that had the following settings:

* Normal / PS ..assumg P&S here
* Normal / LB ..assuming Letterbox here
* Wide .. assuming true 16x9 TV here

When I played around w/ the above settings, I finally got the TRUE 16x9
view on my 13" TV and I was a happy camper again. But, note, that this
only happend on some movies.. the fullscreen issue that is. If your movie
has lesser bars in a given AR ie, 1:85 it might play fullscreen, while in yet
another 1:85, but w/ more bars, it would play widscreen. So, do some
experimenting, and make note of such cases.

So, do check your DVD player, as you may have one of these (or variation)
settings incorrectly set

Good luck,
-vhelp

[F-ING HOSTILE]

So, do check your DVD player, as you may have one of these (or variation)
settings incorrectly set
Good luck,
-vhelp

Thanks for the reply!!
I have a Sony DVP-CX875P 300 disc DVD Player, and have played with the settings quite a bit.
My choices are 16:9, 4:3LB, and 4:3PS.
I'm pretty sure that the 4:3 settings won't change a thing, but I'll check again and let you know exactly what happened!

[Ejoc]

If you want to rencode it using AVISynth you can:

First after ripping the dvd to the hard drive, you can make the d2v and wav files using DVD2AVI. With DVD2AVI running, go under the video menu to the clip menu. Click on the unlabled check box in the corner, then adjust the top and bottom till the black bars are removed, you may have to leave a few pixels of black behind, you'll see when you use it. Write down the number of pixels for the top, and the new image size 720xSomething.

then in your .avs do something like(Im not at my computer so I'm going from memory):

LoadPlugin(...)
MPEG2Source("blah.d2v")
crop(0,The number of pixels for the top,720,that something number)
LanzosResize(720,480)

Then rencode it as a 16:9 flagged MPEG2, slap the audio on, and author it, I wont go into that since you have a DVD burner.

Oh yea, I have that Evil Inside sticker on my computer

[geek rock]

i love the way you're all talking about ripping a disc and re-encoding the footage while cropping the bars from the top and bottom, and so on and so forth..

why not skip all this crap, and just press the button that does 16:9 zoom on your widescreen TV?

[Ejoc]

why not skip all this crap, and just press the button that does 16:9 zoom on your widescreen TV?

If you read the above posts:

I have used the zoom view to correct this problem(when watching a 1.85:1 movie), but it diminishes the video quality slightly, as well as cutting off a small portion of the video on top and bottom.

If you want to rencode it using AVISynth you can:

[geek rock]

i did read the above posts. of course using the zoom will result in a slight loss in picture quality, but a total re-encoding will too. (and it'll take about 5000 times as long.)

and as for using 16:9 zoom on a TV to watch a 1.85:1 movie.. there shouldn't be anything cut off the top or bottom, as 1.85:1 films themselves have tiny borders encoded in them so they appear correctly in 16:9 video streams.

are you sure you're using the correct zoom mode on your TV?

[FulciLives]

My understanding is that some 16x9 WIDESCREEN televisions do not have a proper mode or method of making a 4:3 widescreen image fit AS IT SHOULD.

For instance some have an option that actually blow the image up to fit from left to right and chop off equal amounts from the top and bottom. That is EXACTLY what you want to do with a 4:3 widescreen movie but again from what I understand not all 16x9 WS TV sets have that option.

Some DVD players have a method of resizing the DVD for the 16x9 WS TV but this is a rather rare feature. Only a few models do this and most of them are rather expensive.

I've followed threads like this over at the AVS FORUM and it seems the best solution is to buy a DVD player that does the proper type of resizing (if the TV doesn't have it).

I haven't actually been over at the AVS FORUM in a while so I forget now what models have this capability. I know some the older PANASONIC models did but I don't think the new models do. I think some of the JVC units did this but I'm not sure about the new models.

It might be worth it for someone interested in this to go to the AVS FORUM and look into either the DVD/LD HARDWARE forum or one of the HDTV forums.

As far as re-encoding goes this can be done. I'm not 100% postive of the correct PAL figure but for NTSC you need to cut 60 from the top and bottom then stretch the image. This will work no matter what the aspect ratio is (well if it is 1.66:1 you will loose some top and bottom info otherwise you will not) but of course you end up re-encoding some of the original black if the movie is wider than 16x9 such as the common 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 aspect ratios. The other method that can be used is to completely cut the black from the top and bottom of the image then resize the image to 720x360 and then add borders to the top and bottom. This will give you fresh "clean" black bars. For instance most movies with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 will be 720x272 once you crop all of the black so you then scretch that to 720x360 and add borders of 60 on the top and bottom to get back to 720x480 and there you go!

These methods can be done a variety of ways. The first method is easy to do with an AviSynth script or simply using the CLIP feature in TMPGEnc. The second method can be done again with an AviSynth script or you can use VirtualDub then frameserve to TMPGEnc or CCE or whatever MPEG-2 encoder you use.

Hope this is helpfull to someone

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[F-ING HOSTILE]

why not skip all this crap, and just press the button that does 16:9 zoom on your widescreen TV?

If you read the above posts:

I have used the zoom view to correct this problem(when watching a 1.85:1 movie), but it diminishes the video quality slightly, as well as cutting off a small portion of the video on top and bottom.

If you want to rencode it using AVISynth you can:

THANK YOU !

[F-ING HOSTILE]

and as for using 16:9 zoom on a TV to watch a 1.85:1 movie.. there shouldn't be anything cut off the top or bottom, as 1.85:1 films themselves have tiny borders encoded in them so they appear correctly in 16:9 video streams.

are you sure you're using the correct zoom mode on your TV?

That's the whole thing.. A 1.85 movie would normally fill the entire 16:9 screen, but when it is flagged 4:3, the zoom feature seems to overcompensate just a bit by not only filling the entire screen with video, but zooming in a little further(actually cutting off a little of the video). My player usually places the "Chapter" display at the top of the screen, but when I use the zoom function on my TV, it zooms in so far that I can't even see the chapter #, as well as about a quarter inch of the video below it! Not to mention that the video quality suffers noticeably when you view the movie in zoom mode.

I would much rather fix the problem than work around it!
Whether I can manage to do that or not, is another story

[F-ING HOSTILE]

These methods can be done a variety of ways. The first method is easy to do with an AviSynth script or simply using the CLIP feature in TMPGEnc. The second method can be done again with an AviSynth script or you can use VirtualDub then frameserve to TMPGEnc or CCE or whatever MPEG-2 encoder you use.

Thanks for the reply, FulciLives, I really appreciate the input!
I think this is the route I will go.
Thankfully this problem seems to be found only in older movies. I have yet to come across a current DVD with this king of encoding.
When I get some time tomorrow, I'll have to run some short test clips through an AviSynth script.

If you want to rencode it using AVISynth you can:

Thanks for the reply. This is exactly what I was looking for! I just need to toy with it a bit and figure out how it will work!

[FulciLives]

Here is a sample AviSynth 2.5x AVS script. This assums you RIPPED the movie to your HDD and then ran it through DVD2AVI to get a D2V project file.

LoadPlugin("DRIVE:\PATH\mpeg2dec3.dll")
MPEG2Source("DRIVE:\PATH\movie.d2v")
crop(0,60,720,360)
LanczosResize(720,480)

This is based on a source that is a NTSC DVD with an original resolution of 720x480

Basically this script loads your D2V project file (be sure to put in the proper path and name for this as well as your MPEG2DEC3.DLL file) then chops 60 pixels off the top and bottom then resizes that image (stretching it) to 720x480 thus making it 16x9 for the NTSC format.

As long as the movie (which is 4:3 widescreen) has an aspect ratio of 1.77:1 or more then this will only cut black off the top and bottom. If the movie is wider than 1.77:1 (such as 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 etc.) then it will cut some black but not ALL of the black. In this instance it should look fine on a 16x9 WIDESCREEN TV but it might look odd if you are watching it on a 4:3 TV because when the DVD player does the resizing for a 4:3 TV it will add some black back and the new black may not match the existing black. However, since you are making this for a 16x9 WS TV then that really shouldn't be a concern.

One thing you might want to do though which will work with this script is to use the CLIP feature in TMPGEnc (assuming you will be using TMPGEnc) but select MASK for the top and bottom and MASK over the existing black ... TMPGEnc will then cover the existing black with FRESH CLEAN black that might look nicer than the original (though if this is a DVD it probably won't matter) so really the only reason to do this is to ensure that the black encoded matches the black the DVD player adds when you watch the 16x9 DVD on a 4:3 TV

Otherwise this script should work with CCE and MainConcepts as well as TMPGEnc etc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[vhelp]

@ FulciLives..

Basically this script loads your D2V project file (be sure to put in the proper path and name for this as well as your MPEG2DEC3.DLL file) then chops 60 pixels off the top and bottom then resizes that image (stretching it) to 720x480 thus making it 16x9 for the NTSC format.

I was reading this, and this struct me something curious, because I am
currently testing a bunch of 4:3 to 16:9 convertions of my TRV22 footage.
What I'm doing here, is shooting some home footage in the 4:3 mode
(because my 16:9 causes saw-tooth artifacts due to scrunching) and then
cropping off 60 pixels from the top and bottom (each) and then taking this
(now) 720x360 and encoding it in TMPG, but in 16:9 mode. Things seem
to look ok, but I don't have it all down fully, and I don't have a Widescreen
TV to actually test this. But, my question is, where you stated that you..

* then resizes that image (stretching it) to 720x480 thus making it 16x9

Are you saying that I need to resize (my cropped off 60 pixels top/bottom
720x360) to a 720x480, and then feed that into TMPG and encode to 16:9 ??

I just want to claify this, cause I'm new to this (my 4:3 to 16:9) for my DV
home footage project.. again, I'm experimenting on this.

Thanks for your input,
-vhelp

[FulciLives]

Actually you can do it either way with TMPGEnc. You can simply cut 60 off the top and bottom in your AVS scrip then import it as 4:3 and let TMPGEnc resize it by selecting FULL SCREEN (this will stretch it to 720x480)

Or you can do the resizing in the AVS script (like I did) in which case you would tell TMPGEnc that you are inputting a 16x9 source.

In fact you can do it ALL in TMPGEnc by using the built-in CLIP fuction to cut off 60 from the top and botom and then select FULL SCREEN which will make it stretch to 720x480 and create a 16x9 MPEG-2

The trick here is to make sure you tell your authoring software that this is a 16x9 clip

If you ask me the easiest method is to do it with the AVS script and import into TMPGEnc using the 16x9 DVD Template and tell TMPGEnc that you are importing a 16x9 source video.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
If you get used to the AVS method it also "frees" you to use other software MPEG-2 encoders that can use the script such as CCE or MainConepts etc.

[vhelp]

.
.
ok, thanks for the explanation there

Right now, i'm experimenting on a few ideas w/ frameserving w/ vdub, and
trying the TMPG way as well. This definately clarify's some of my issues
w/ converting a pure 4:3 (non-16:9) source into an 16:9 source. I've toyed
w/ this w/ a Interlaced TV game show, and incorporating my DirecTV's
onscreen display as a reference (quality tool) and seeing how the final
quality is effected. In short, if the onscreen Guide looks blurry, then I know
I'm doing something wrong ! Anyways.. I'm off to my experiments..

Thanks again,
-vhelp

[FulciLives]

.
.
ok, thanks for the explanation there

Right now, i'm experimenting on a few ideas w/ frameserving w/ vdub, and
trying the TMPG way as well. This definately clarify's some of my issues
w/ converting a pure 4:3 (non-16:9) source into an 16:9 source. I've toyed
w/ this w/ a Interlaced TV game show, and incorporating my DirecTV's
onscreen display as a reference (quality tool) and seeing how the final
quality is effected. In short, if the onscreen Guide looks blurry, then I know
I'm doing something wrong ! Anyways.. I'm off to my experiments..

Thanks again,
-vhelp

Good Luck

If you want to do this in VirtualDub then it really isn't that hard to do it there either or if you are using TMPGEnc but need to frameserve because of filters etc. then you can still do the cliping and resizing in TMPGEnc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[sterno]

A while back I rented "Elling" (a funny Norwegian film, made me laugh anyway) from Hollywood Video. It was widescreen but I think it was put on the DVD as letterboxed 4:3 instead of anamorphic 16:9, and it had hard subtitles instead of DVD subs.

[FulciLives]

A while back I rented "Elling" (a funny Norwegian film, made me laugh anyway) from Hollywood Video. It was widescreen but I think it was put on the DVD as letterboxed 4:3 instead of anamorphic 16:9, and it had hard subtitles instead of DVD subs.

Thank you so much for adding to our discussion about how to convert a 4:3 widescreen DVD to a 16x9 widescreen DVD.

This post has completely made me rethink the way I process such material.

Thanks again for the helpful information.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Ejoc]

ROFL

[F-ING HOSTILE]

I rented "Gone With The Wind"once!
It was actually on VHS... so...hope that helps someone
(read above posts)

On a serious note...I've been swamped, so I haven't got to play with these scripts as much as I would like, but I think you guys (Ejoc, Fulcilives, and Vhelp)are right on the money.

I have been using CCE (2.5) for my encodes, and haven't played with TMPGEnc for over a year, so I'm going to reinstall it and use it for these projects (so I can play with the "clip and resize" there). I should be able to spend some quality time on it Saturday. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

Thanks a Million!!

[Grant_H]

Some DVD players have a method of resizing the DVD for the 16x9 WS TV but this is a rather rare feature. Only a few models do this and most of them are rather expensive.


I haven't actually been over at the AVS FORUM in a while so I forget now what models have this capability. I know some the older PANASONIC models did but I don't think the new models do. I think some of the JVC units did this but I'm not sure about the new models.

Just in case anyone really cares, I have a philips dvd-711 DVD player and it has this option. I use it all the time I wouldn't buy a DVD player that doesn't have it.

Also, if anyone want's to know more about the different types of widescreen, and what is done when video is transfered to DVD. There is a good website:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/index.htm

I learned alot from it.

[vhelp]

@ f-ingH..

Definately re-install TMPG But, get hold of v2.520 (should be latest) as it
(imo) is one of the best version (of the zillions thus far) and use this one.
I used to use v2.53 (since early last year) but now am settled w/ v2.520

But, do stay away from v2.59 !! ..has some bugs in the encoding
modes I think.

Some advice I could give you, include...

* Bitrate.. Give CQ mode a try. Most DVD rips can get away w/
...CQ: 70; min: 0300; and max: 2500 just fine, but be a little weary about
...sources that are pure Interlace. But, even these settings will do. Mind
...you, this was based on other settings from advanced peoples ie, kvcd.net etc.

* Aspect Ratios.. There is virtually no limit to the variation of encoding
...projects here. Experiment, experiment till you get it write, for your WS TV.
...Note 1, Video Tab is for OUTPUT mode, so do set to 16:9
...Note 2, Advanced Tab is for INPUT mode ie, your sources AR comming in.
...this is the tricky Tab to set AR correctly.

* Have another look (if you haven't already) w/ DJRumpy's guide on Aspect Ratios.
---> Determining Aspect Ratios and Resolutions

* I envey you and your WS TV

* DV home footage.. set to CQ: 70; min :0300; max: 5000
...I'd show you some of my OWN footage, but I don't want YOU enveying me :P

Well, good luck thus far,
-vhelp

[F-ING HOSTILE]

Definately re-install TMPG But, get hold of v2.520 (should be latest) as it
(imo) is one of the best version (of the zillions thus far) and use this one.
I used to use v2.53 (since early last year) but now am settled w/ v2.520

Thanks Vhelp
I'll get on TMPGEnc's website and see if I can acquire a demo of v2.520.
Those guys are usually real cool about giving you fully-functional demo's.

I envey you and your WS TV

I bet you wouldn't envy the payments
Actually I sold my old Trinitron, and a lot of other electronics, along with a golf cart, and firearms to pay for it
It's well worth it! Watching movies like "Saving Private Ryan"make it all worth while. On the down side, older movies, and any poor quality DVD's or backups with blemishes look that much worse on the 63" screen. I guess I won't be using DVD2ONE much anymore(not that I ever used it much to begin with)!

[DvdHeader]

Here's my 2 cents on how I convert a 2.35:1 WS-Letterbox to a 2.35:1 WS Anamorphic


1 ) I rip the whole movie to HDD.

2 ) Using DVD2AVI I crop the movie to get rid of the black bars (720x272). I adjust the luminance if necessary and I save as .d2v project

3 ) I convert using VFAPI

4 ) I Resize to 720x360 and expand frame and letterbox image to (720x480 using VirtualDub to frameserve to CCEBASIC

5 ) Encode with CCEBASIC with a 2-pass VBR (Min: 2000 ; Avg: 5000 ; Max: 8000)

6 ) I process the resulting .mpv through DO PULLDOWN (29.976 fps and progressive)

7 ) I author with TMPGEnc DVD Author , muxing the video and the audio.

8 ) Burn the video_ts and audio_ts to DVD-R using Instant CD/DVD


The whole process takes around 7 to 8 hours with the encoding taking most of the time (5-6 hours). I've done it on many letterbox movies and they look fine on my 65" T.V.

[F-ING HOSTILE]

The whole process takes around 7 to 8 hours with the encoding taking most of the time (5-6 hours). I've done it on many letterbox movies and they look fine on my 65" T.V.

DvdHeader- Thanks for the reply.
I don't seem to have a problem displaying 16:9 Letterbox movies, just 16:9 movies that were encoded as 4:3 (we may just be calling the exact same thing by two different names). When you rip the movies you use this process on, does DVD Decrypter, or DVD2AVI say that they are 4:3?
Thanks!!

[DvdHeader]

They are the same thing. DVD2AVI reports 16:9 letterbox movies as being 4:3. For example the movie 'The Thing' with Kurt Russel.

I processed that movie through my method and got a very good result.