AVI to SVCD cropping bars

[chesneychrist]

Hello, I imagine this question has been asked before but after doing a search I couldn't find any answers so here goes.
I want to convert an avi file to svcd using ffmpegx, as far as I can see this seems pretty straight forward but the avi file has large black bars at the top and bottom, I'd like to crop these I know the crop function for this conversion doesn't work in ffmpegx, so how do I go about doing this?

Thanks in advance.

[galactica]

even if you did this cropping, its my understanding that the SVCD will play back with these "black bars" any way as the tv/monitor will be the one adding them now [unless that is you are going to watch them on a 16:9 tv/monitor]

As for how... i dont really know how to do that. but just wanted to tell you if you dont have 16:9 viewer, theres no point.

[chesneychrist]

I'm new to all this so please excuse my ignorance, I'm sure you can appreciate to the newb a lot of this can seem bewildering.

As for my question, quicktime tells me the AVI file is 480 x 576 pixels but the image looks 16:9, the image fits the width of quicktime window but there are large bars at top and bottom. I just thougt it might be better to discard these areas for the conversion.

Should I just forget about it and convert as is, I'm using a widescreen monitor and telivion btw.

Thanks again.

[galactica]

the "black bars" you see are burned into that image, such that you are getting a 4:3 ratio size file, but it has the 16:9 movie component within it, the typical "letter box" appearance - correct?

personal experience from tying to crop those bad boys out led to nothing but errors. I eventually gave up and just copied as is, because if you dont have a 16:9 television, then your tv will just put those black bars back in there for you!

im sure it can be done, but i gave up on it so i never figured out how to do it

[chesneychrist]

the "black bars" you see are burned into that image, such that you are getting a 4:3 ratio size file, but it has the 16:9 movie component within it, the typical "letter box" appearance - correct?

Thats right.

I'll just copy it as it is then, thanks for your help galactica.

[deadsierra]

I could post a walkthrough on a way to remove the black bars with nothing other than QTPro and an image editor, but galatica is right (big surprise, huh?) It would not be advisable, cause you need to frell with the aspect ratio to avoid screwing everything up.

Edit: And as of yet, I don't own a 16x9 tv, so I can't try and fix the problem anyway. Now, if you're copying the files to something like a Tungsten T3, then removing the bars is VERY useful. I hope to someday own a widescreen tv, at which point in time, I will devise a method to remove the bars and make it look all nice and sexy. Or, I'll get bored and give up.