Aspect Ratio Problems

[Weapon-X]

Let's see, I'm trying to edit a movie I own on DVD.

I've applied the steps below to make the VOB into a dummy AVI to edit in Premiere.

>Used DGMPGDec to extract the audio from the vob.
>Then I used VFAPI to make a dummy AVI which I can then edit in Premiere "cause it doesn't allow you to edit VOB files"
>I then used HeadAC3he to make a WAV file out of the AC3 file.
>Loaded th AVI & new WAV files into VirtualDub to merge "MUX" them.

All the steps above I learnt from the below link
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic338866.html

But here I can already see a problem as AVI is not 16:9 anymore but 4:3. I continued anyways to load it into Premiere Pro, loaded the AVI file. But the only time I can get it back to 16:9 is if i export to DV AVI "which is too low quality". If I export to Microsoft AVI using 16:9 ratio settings I get a 4:3 output. I've tried forcing the video with Interpret Footage but it's remains just too large or too small. I can play with the resolutions & have found one in that past that gave me 16:9 proportions but it was a crazy resolution that my FAVC DVD publishing software just recognises as 4:3 anyways.

Any solutions would be greatly appriciated.
God Bless

[guns1inger]

Microsoft AVI is just a container format. What codec do you chose ? Not all support the AR flags.

What you should be doing is encoding to mpeg-2 (16:9) from your Premiere timeline, then authoring yourself, rather than using FAVC.

[Weapon-X]

Shot for the reply.

I'm using AVI Lossless "Lagarith" but i've tried with no compression & some others. It doesn't seem to be the codec, all codecs don't seem to accept my AR ratio.

I've tried exporting via Adobe Media Encoder using MPEG-2 & it fixed the aspect ratio problem. Wonder why Microsoft AVI doesn't recognise my ratio settings. MPEG-2 does however seem to lower the quality of my video. Not easy to see but if i look close it is a bit more grainy. Also the file size for a 30 sec clip went from being 166mb "AVI Lossless" to 23mb "MPEG-2". I've now cranked up the min & max bit rate to 14.0000, which is the highest & the video looks better & the file size comes to 52.6mb. Still feel "AVI Lossless" has less quality loss though.

Why do you sugguest I don't author with FAVC, is it of poor quality?

[Baldrick]

Use a mpeg2/dvd encoder where you can set the aspect ratio to 16:9 like tmpgenc xpress, hcenc, etc.

[Abond]

If you want only to cut some scenes, better use DVD Shrink for the job.

[Michael33]

Abond - what a great suggestion. It never occurred to me (and maybe many others) to use Shrink exclusively for this purpose. Fantastic use for Shrink.

[guns1inger]

FAVC's authoring is fine, even if the menus are simplistic. Your process is needlessly complicated.

[Weapon-X]

My aim is to edit out the audio of of certain scenes but keeping the movie as a whole.
So any suguestions are welcome, please refer me to any shorter less complicated methods.

Will look into DVD shrink & other MPEG-2 codec mentioned as another option but any solutions to fixing the aspect ratio when exporting with Lossless AVI via Premiere Pro??

Many thanks for responses & help.

[guns1inger]

Rip to the HDD
Demux the audio from the main title
Edit the audio
Mux it back and author back to VOBs
Replace the VOBs in the original with your new ones and burn

There is no simple way to edit a 5.1 audio track then re-encode it, however if it is stereo it is pretty simple. Convert to WAV, edit with Audacity, save the new WAV, then encode to AC3 with Aften and EncWAV2AC3. There are also plenty of guides on how to put your VOBs back using VobBlanker or similar. None of this touches the video, and so the aspect ratio should not be affected. Just remember though, when you are changing your audio you need to blank out, not cut. If you cut the audio and change the length you will get sync problems.

If all you are doing is censoring the audio track then the video and DVD structure should not be touched or changed.

[Weapon-X]

Awesome thanks, I have found a less impressive solution by resizing the footage via Virtual Dub. The problem originated because the DVD uses letterboxing. So I just resize it back to 16:9 & it edits fine aswell as publishes in 16:9.

But your method seems far supperior, thanks for the help!