DVD Copy: VOB -> WMV, DAR problem

[Anonymous85454]

I am using Intervideo DVD Copy to convert from VOB (ripped using DVD Shrink) to WMV at a bitrate of 2.357 mbps. The video quality is good. The only problem is that DVD Copy seems to automatically set a DAR (display aspect ratio) for the WMV file of 16:9 instead of the original 4:3, which makes everthing look fatter. There is no setting for DAR in the options menu. Is there some way to fix this problem either in DVD Copy or easily with another program? I looked at DVD Patcher, which apparently can be used to adjust DAR, but it seems to apply only to MPEG-2 files.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[guns1inger]

Was the original 16:9 or letterboxed ?
What resolution are you encoding at ?
Have you considered alternative software ?

[Anonymous85454]

guns1inger:

- the original DAR for the VOB file was regular 4:3 and not letterboxed
- resolution is 720 x 480 NTSC
- I have tried Simple DivX but can't get audio in the resulting DivX files, even after installing the audio codecs. Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of time to devote to this, so if I can't find a fairly simple solution to the WMV file problem, I will probably give up and just wait a year or so and hope the software problems are fixed.

Thanks!

[tousaboy]

For VOB->WMV,you should try the SPAM,which also has many additional and exciting features such as Sutitle offset, DVD Crop, DVD Letterbox, Text watermark, Image watermark, etc. SPAM

[Anonymous85454]

I found an answer to my problem, which, now that I think about it, was pretty obvious.

Since this is a WMV file, I simply imported it into Windows Moviemaker and then re-saved it. Since the default DAR for the output file is 4:3, this solved the 16:9 DAR problem caused by DVD Copy. I may have lost a little video quality with the decode/recode, but I'm satisfied with the result.