Cutting black borders

[HamishT]

Hi,

I have a DVD would like some help on, im not to sure how to do this.




the actual picture is in Widescreen, but its been done in Letterbox format, so watching it on a widescreen tv, i either have to set it to 4:3, or use the zoom function. What I am hoping to do is rip the movie (which I know how to do), and cut out the black bars, so that it is just the actual image left, so it will fit my widescreen tv better, without using any tv aspect ratio function.

are there any guides available, and is this even possible without having to encode the movie to avi, then crop, then back to dvd, which may result it bad picture quality?

[guns1inger]

DVD Rebuilder has a function to do exactly what you want. It is under the Avisynth functions, but requires no avisynth knowledge on your part. Rip the DVD to your HDD, open it in DVD Rebuilder (free), select the Convert 4:3 letterbox to 16:9 function, and let it do it's thing. Use the HCenc encoder (installed with DVD Rebuilder) to get ahigh quality output. This method also maintains menus, subtitles and audio tracks.

[HamishT]

thanks guns1inger. so it wouldnt just squash the video, it would take out the black?

[guns1inger]

It crops off the right amount of black from the top and bottom, resizes, and re-encodes. I have used it for exactly the same reason as you, and it works very well. Personally, I think in most cases the image quality is better after this process than from simply using the zoom function

[HamishT]

if it comes up saying 'no compression needed', should i continue or change a setting?

[dialysis1a]

Select Force Reencoding For Filters and there will be no problem.

[HamishT]

It worked! thanks for all the help!

[guns1inger]

Great. What is the movie ?

[HamishT]

'The Keep', its a transfer from the Widescreen Laserdisc. Audio is really quiet, but you just turn up the volume and its ok, and now its really widescreen, its more enjoyable.

[guns1inger]

I thought that's what it was. I haven't seen that in years (and years).

[HamishT]

Select Force Reencoding For Filters and there will be no problem.

I cant find that option anywhere. i need to do it again so ill try your method.

[guns1inger]

That might be a Pro option. It certainly isn't in the latest free version anywhere that I can find.

[HamishT]

something went wrong again, the first time round, it came up with an error saying something like 'mpeg encoder has stopped working' so I hit 'Close' but it carried on encoding, I thought it worked, so i burnt it to dvd, but yeah, the last 10min starting crapping out. it must have been the error. The second time around, the same error happended.

[HamishT]

That might be a Pro option. It certainly isn't in the latest free version anywhere that I can find.

yeah I cant even find the 16:9 option in the pro version lol

[guns1inger]

DVD Rebuilder doesn't care about 4:3 or 16:9 in most circumstances because it is designed to simply re-encode what you already have to make it smaller. The only time if changes aspect ratio is when it converts 4:3 letterbox to 16:9 material.

I don't know what is causing your error - I have not seen that error before.

What encoder are you using ?

What produced this error ? DVD Rebuilder, or the encoder ?

What media are you using ? Cheap media is unreliable at the outer edges, which is where the end of a movie is stored (DVDs burn and read from the centre out to the edge), so it is usually the end of the movie that suffers.

What did you burn with ?

[dadrab]

something went wrong again, the first time round, it came up with an error saying something like 'mpeg encoder has stopped working' so I hit 'Close' but it carried on encoding, I thought it worked, so i burnt it to dvd, but yeah, the last 10min starting crapping out. it must have been the error. The second time around, the same error happended.

You might have to find a different encoder. I was trying to re-encode a downloaded television episode once upon a time and kept getting a similar error each time I tried. I wasn't smart enough to try something different until I'd been hit with the same error about four times.

I even tried to go into the original file and clip out the part that was causing the problem. STILL didn't work.

At that point, absolutely pissed off, I tried a different encoder and it worked fine.

So, the takeaway from that little excersise was if you have a problem encoding a file, try a different encoder before you go to the trouble of hacking and chopping and being disappointed.

[HamishT]

third times a charm as they say, didnt get the error and it seems to be playing the last 10min ok now. thanks all!

[MysticE]

'The Keep', its a transfer from the Widescreen Laserdisc. Audio is really quiet, but you just turn up the volume and its ok, and now its really widescreen, its more enjoyable.

For a movie ony (The Wild Bunch) I've used AVStoDVD to accomplish the same thing. It too can use HCenc and also uses AviSyth and the ability to automatic convert to 16:9. In your case the main advantage would be the preset tweak (there are quite a few useful ones) to amplify audio. You will have to merge your VOBs into one file though to input.