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[MGadAllah]

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[MGadAllah]

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[hech54]

So is there any tool that I can use to do the crop for these bars at the bottom without losing any quality.

You will need to re-encode the video and there will be quality loss. Forget about cropping....it will leave you with an odd sized video that will be very hard to work with. Mask over the stuff at the bottom with either solid color or blurring.

[MGadAllah]

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[hech54]

As far as you are confirming that there is no such a way, please advise for which tool to be used first to do the solid color or blurring on source without any converting or re-encode or any quality loss?

Either cropping or masking...you WILL need to re-encode.

Me personally I use VirtualDub to mask or crop....but virtualdub only outputs to .AVI(from lossless to highly compressed Xvid/Divx....which are not DVD standard). Output to lossless AVI (it will be a HUGE file) then re-encode back to MPEG2 for DVD.
You can also do what is called "frameserving" out of VirtualDub to spare you the huge intermediate AVI file...but that is not very newbie friendly.

[AlanHK]

As far as you are confirming that there is no such a way, please advise for which tool to be used first to do the solid color or blurring on source without any converting or re-encode or any quality loss?

Actually, if you just want to cover it with a solid block, you can use a Subtitle to overlay it.
The subtitle doesn't need any text (though it can if you want), and you make the background colour solid instead of transparent as it usually is.

Then you make a DVD with the subtitle default on.

To alter the original image itself you will indeed need to reencode.

[guns1inger]

You cannot crop, cover or blur the footage without re-encoding. It simply cannot be done. Whatever you end up doing to remove/hide the lower portion of your footage, you will have to re-encode. You can minimise the loss of quality by encoding the new footage at a higher bitrate than the source, but that will give you larger files at the end of the process.

[MGadAllah]

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[MGadAllah]

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[guns1inger]

It doesn't. You still have to re-encode. You might be able to crop instead of masking because the resolution isn't as important - maybe crop to 1.778 : 1 (16:9). But you will still have to re-encode the output.

[MGadAllah]

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[guns1inger]

AVI Demux can work with mpeg video and output in a variety of formats.

[MGadAllah]

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[guns1inger]

I am still running an older version of AVI Demux because of some stability issues with some of the newer releases. I have 2.5.2 on one machine, 2.4. something on another.

Other alternatives include XmediaRecode, or even Avisynth and HCEnc

[AlanHK]

I will upload a .avi and a .rmvb to Archive.org

To do that you must reencode anyway, so you can filter/crop it on the way.

Warning:The win32/64 2.5.5 versions are named 2.5.4 (r7200) and lack one commit regarding mpeg layer2 audio.
Please advise.

Don't worry about it. Just go ahead and try it.
Try one of the older versions if it doesn't work for you. I'm using 2.53.
Avidemux has a lot of built in filters you can use.

[MGadAllah]

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[guns1inger]

AVI Demux can crop and output as AVI, MPG. Don't know about RMVB - never liked Real Player and its formats. Probably Real Producer. Output one copy as Huffyuv AVI (lossless) after cropping, then convert to RMVB

[hech54]

It seems that recoding is a must.
Well, the situation now is a source file (MPEG-2) needs to be crop and converted to .avi and .rmvb.
Please which tools you think can do both as fine or it is a must to be several steps using various tools to achieve as good quality as possible?

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/336228-How-to-crop-a-MPEG-2-file-from-the-bottom-wi...=1#post2088219

[MGadAllah]

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[MGadAllah]

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[hech54]

1.8.5 for me.

[MGadAllah]

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[MGadAllah]

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[MGadAllah]

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[MGadAllah]

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[poisondeathray]

You need the mpeg2 plugin for vdub
http://home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/index.html

[MGadAllah]

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[poisondeathray]

add a null transform , or any filter (video=>filters) , then the crop button will show up

[MGadAllah]

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[poisondeathray]

see the screenshot above: add "null transform"

null transform does nothing. This is only so the cropping button gets activated (it's highlighted in the red box). Push that button