1.33:1 to 2.35:1 - Possible with good results?

[NotSoEasy]

Has anyone ever done this?
I was showing my brother the difference between widescreen and fullscreen from the pages of TheDigitalBits and saw something interesting.This 'Super 35' method.
I found it sorta interesting that we can be tricked like that although it seems easy enough.

I assume it can be as easy as cropping and resizing but when resized I would think the image would be very bad as it went from small to large.Are there good enough filters to give a good image?
I know this is done starting with film which is plenty high resolution enough, but what about going from DVD to XviD
I almost want to try it and see how my results come out.I just dont know what filters I would use to make the image look as good as possible.Another thing that may be a problem is making sure the cropping is done right so nothing important gets cut off ( heads ) Can cropping be done frame by frame to avoid this?
Dont know why someone would want to do this as you would be removing a large chunk of image, but just seems like it would come in handy for some things that might have a lot of useless imagery on tops and bottoms therefore no worries.

[guns1inger]

It depends on how much resizing you do.

Working with NTSC numbers, as this suits you region, all you need to do is the following :

For 4:3, letterbox 104 pixels from the top, and 104 from the bottom to give you a 720 x 272 visible image area (2.35:1 image). You find you need to pan the actual image around inside this frame to keep the view correct. Most editors allow you to do this via keyframing, so you can move smoothly around.

That's it for 4:3. No resizing necessary.

For 16:9 it is a little more complex, but not much more. Do as above for 4:3. Once you are happy with the framing, crop 60 pixels from the top and 60 from the bottom of the frame. Resize the vertical to 480 and encode as 16:9

This is all for DVD output from 4:3 DV source.

If you want to output to Xvid instead it gets alittle more complicated because you have to take into account pixel aspect ratio changes as well.

For a 4:3 DV source, crop 104 pixels from the top and 104 from the bottom, then resize the width to 640. Encode as xvid with a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio.

[NotSoEasy]

Looks like keyframing is what may need to be done and if so, what would one use other than Vdub? It looks like Vdub may take a very long time.Are there other software that will do all of this maybe faster?
If not or just for the heck of it, how can I learn to keyframe with Vdub.I see nothing in the help files.

Thanks for your help!

[guns1inger]

I don't know if it can be done with vdub. Personally, while I use vdub a lot, I never use it for editing beyond extracting a single clip if needed. I use Vegas, which makes this type of thing a relative breeze. I haven't had occassion to go to the extreme of 2.35:1, but I have letterboxed 4:3 to 16:9 a number of times, and used keyframing to keep heads in the picture. I think you need to find a more appropriate tool.

[NotSoEasy]

Thanks for the info.
I tried out Vegas trail and I didnt like it much.So many options all over the place was intimidating to say the least.I guess like anything it takes time.
I have a DVD-R I would like to try this on.Many in fact that are 4:3 that could lose much of the bottom and tops as not much there.At the same time, want to make sure heads dont get cut.
Know of any other piece of software that might work?

[guns1inger]

Something like WAX2 might be able to do it. At least, it might be able to let you frame everything up, key frame the visible image shifts, then output and avi to be cropped and resized in virtualdub.