Help : How to convert a 4:3 Letterboxed DVD to 16:9

[digital_EUR]

hi there,

i ve the Titanic movie and it is in 4:3 Letterbox format but since i ve a 16:9 television i would like to know if i could convert it to 16:9 by somehow removing the top and bottom black bars but still keeping the aspect ratio of the movie.
i ve DVD2AVI, VFAPI and CCE as tools for frameserving and encoding.

thanks in advance for all the help you can provide me in this issue.
best regards

[dphirschler]

Doesn't your TV have a 'zoom' feature?

Oh well, anyways, here is how to do it.

1. Cut off 60 pixels from both the top and bottom so that your resulting image is 720x360.

2. Resize to 720x480.

3. re-encode to anamorphic widescreen.

It won't look any better, but will at least use your whole screen. I thought I heard that Titanic was being re-issued on DVD sometime in the next year.


Darryl

[digital_EUR]

yes, my tv has a zoom function but it cuts out the subtititles and a portion of both sides of the image.
i want to take advantage of the full screen area, just that, never mentioned nothing about increasing the quality image.
how do i resize the image to 720x480?
i was meanwhile trying to cut the 720x576 image into 720x408, it seemed adjusted to 16:9. why that resize?

by next year do you mean 2005? that´s a very long time to wait

best regards

[johns0]

Resize to 720x576,720x480 is ntsc,also cut 72 pixels instead of 60.Use tmpgenc for encoding and resize with the clip frame function in advanced settings.

[equinox137]

Don't just cut 60 pixels........make sure you custom set the arrange setting option in TPGEnc to 720x360, otherwise it will come out at 1.85:1 instead of 2.35:1, as Titanic is supposed to be.

[johns0]

equinox137,if you note digital_EUR`s titanic is pal and not ntsc.

[dumpy]

I have a couple of films like this that I have copied to a region free disk. What program do you use to make these changes. The original films were PAL format.

Thanks

[wingnut]

Afternoon,

just one small(ish) point

yes, my tv has a zoom function but it cuts out the subtititles and a portion of both sides of the image.

If these subtitles are player generated, e.g. you can turn them on and off you are going to have to do quite a bit of re-authoring to get what you want.

Something like...

1. Rip the disk in dvd decrypter / smartripper and ensure you rip the subtitle stream

2. demux the video / audio and subtitle streams

3. Use virtualdubmod to crop the black bars then frameserve to TMPGENC to create your anamorphic widescreen version

4. Use ifoedit to remux the new video with the original audio and subtitle streams.

5. Burn the new titleset to the media of your choice.

There was a guide around here somewhere named something like "adding subtitles to a dvd" which covered quite a bit of that procedure but unless you just want the movie without the menus or subtitles you may be in for quite a learning curve.

Cheers

Edz

[digital_EUR]

thanks in advance

about the re-authoring that is not a problem for me.
i just dont know is how to make the proper resize after cropping.
CCE is crashing when opening the AVS file from AviSynth.
TmpgEnc lacks of quality when compared with CCE.

i am almost giving up on this although i dont like to give up on things.

best regards

[morrisson]

You should also crop the same number of pixels from the left and right of the picture too, otherwise everything will be squeezed horizontally making everyone look thinner. (Like when you watch a full widescreen broadcast on a 4:3 TV).

You will loose some of the picture from each side, but the picture will maintain its aspect ratio, and this is what happens anyway when DVDs are released in the 1.85/1.79:1 ratio converted from the 2.35/2.39:1 ratio - pan & scan).

Of course doing this cropping will reduce the quality of the image but as long as it is high quality to begin with you should not notice too much difference especially if you use VBR encoding and de-noise filters etc.

[offline]

CCE is crashing when opening the AVS file from AviSynth.

Remove your version of avisynth, install DVD2SVCD and follow one
of the many quides to making a DVD from DVD2SVCD, select to
edit the avisynth file in the frameserver tab and add your
resize avisynth commands. Encode as 16:9 with sub ripping, keep
original ac3 sound and voila!