On letterboxing

[SexShade]

Hi,

I have a SVCD file that is letterboxed, it has those black bars on top and bottom of the picture.

Current aspect ratio is 4:3, but if I want to remove the black bars of the picture, so I end with an 16:9 movie.

How can i do that??
Is there a way to do it without re-encoding the video??

Thanks

[Forum Troll]

IIRC, SVCD doesn't support anamorphic video. You'd need to convert it to DVD compliant resolution. What I would do is use TMPGENC to reencode it, selecting the 16x9 template and use the clip frame option to remove the black bars.

[FulciLives]

Hi,

I have a SVCD file that is letterboxed, it has those black bars on top and bottom of the picture.

Current aspect ratio is 4:3, but if I want to remove the black bars of the picture, so I end with an 16:9 movie.

How can i do that??
Is there a way to do it without re-encoding the video??

Thanks

1.) SVCD does not support 16x9 video. Although it should work you will get a 16x9 image out of a stand alone DVD player. This means it will only look normal on a 16x9 WS TV ... on a 4:3 TV it will look stretched and totally wrong.

2.) Only way to do it is to re-encode which will decrease the quality unless it was a DVD back-up in which case you can start over from the DVD which will of course provided better quality than re-encoding the SVCD you have now.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[SexShade]

Thanks for both answers:

Looks that I'll use TMPEGenc. I was hoping that would be some way to do it without re-encoding, but it seems it's not the case.

Ok, SVCD picture would be streched on standards TV, but will work ok in widescreen TVs, right? It's not what I want but it's better than keeping things as they are.

On the other hand, I know that it will works fine on PCs with PowerDVD because I've done it with other video I have, that was ripped from 16:9 DVD but encoded to SVCD 4:3, no letterboxing. The result was a distorted image, like that you describe.

Later, I used a small piece of software called Pulldown to change its AR flag from 4:3 to 16:9 without re-encoding. Now it looks fine on my PC as a 16:9 film, and still is a SVCD file (although I guess is not compliant).

This video seen at full screen before changing the AR was distorted, but after changing the flag, looks perfectly on my PC at full screen with the black bars on top and bottom, that are NOT encoded into the video.

I can't test it on stand alone SVCD players since I don't have any, but I guess it would works ok. What would make it play rightly in PCs but not on TVs?

I wonder if through this method I could play 16:9 SVCD (not compliant) on standards TVs, after all I believe 16:9 DVD movies uses a similar technique when played on 4:3 TVs. I'm correct?

In short, could be possible to make a 16:9 SVCD video (although not really compliant) that would look fine on any TV set by changing the AR flag of the distorted video?

I'm not sure that I've expresed myself clearly, if not I'll try to answer your questions better.

Thanks again.

[FulciLives]

In short, could be possible to make a 16:9 SVCD video (although not really compliant) that would look fine on any TV set by changing the AR flag of the distorted video?

Simple answer = No

The only format that supports 16x9 is the DVD format and even then only when using Full D1 resolution (which is 720x480 NTSC or 720x576 PAL).

A stand alone DVD player will not properly format a 16x9 SVCD to look normal on a 4:3 TV

Yes a software media player on the computer can usually do the resizing on any video file but not a stand alone DVD player.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman