Changing Aspect Ratio for .avi

[Sizdar]

Hi, I have a old TV movie made back in 1991 that I want to convert to a 16.9'ish ratio that I can burn to a DVD to watch on 16.9 TV's. The thing is this is my moms favorite movie and she can't stand the letterboxing on old movies on modern TV's. I have tried just about everything I can think of and tried searching google but can't find anything that would work. The last thing I can think of doing would be to play the video in a media player and record the video using camtasia studio to get it at the 16:9 ratio. This however takes up alot of memory and don't have the time to clean off my hard drive for it.

So what I am wondering is if there is another way to change a 4:3 to 16:9 without having the letterbox? Its a old movie so some distortion will be more then ok. It doesn't have to be completely 16:9 either some letterboxing on the top/bottom is fine, its the sides that bugs the crap out of us.

Thanks, Siz

PS: Some info on the video.
The Haunted 1991
.AVI format
512 x 420

I use GOM player and playing in its 16.9 r.atio filter looks just fine

[manono]

It's your mother's favorite movie?

It's a 1.33:1 made-for-TV movie. It's supposed to have black bars on the sides (called 'pillarbars', not 'letterboxing') when played on a 16:9 TV set.

If you're reencoding it for DVD as 16:9 you have two choices - cut off the heads and feet to make it 'widescreen', or stretch it so everyone looks fat. My suggestion is to do it right (keep it 1.33:1) and then use the remote control of your TV set to stretch it out and ruin it if you must. All widescreen TV sets have stretch modes for people such as your mother. Or you could use the zoom on the remote control and cut off the heads and feet.

By the way, the one you downloaded doesn't even have the right aspect ratio as it's only 1.22:1 and everyone is too tall and thin, I would guess.

[Khaver]

You could do a warp resize where the left and right sides get stretched a little more than the center portion. A lot of cable channels do this to show programs on their HD channel that were shot in 4:3. To lessen the effect you can crop a little of the top and/or bottom before doing the warp.

[mike20021969]

called 'pillarbars'.

...and here's me thinking it's called pillarbox(ing).

not 'letterboxing'

I thought you might have put that as letterbars LOL

[Sizdar]

You could do a warp resize where the left and right sides get stretched a little more than the center portion. A lot of cable channels do this to show programs on their HD channel that were shot in 4:3. To lessen the effect you can crop a little of the top and/or bottom before doing the warp.

How would I do that? I think that would work just fine I watched it with the GOM player 16:9 filter and it stretched the movie to 747 x 422. Im not sure if this would be considered really 16:9 though.

Thanks for the replies. I did post this in the NEWBIE thread because I am "noob" to this stuff. We all have our own preferences for things and this is how my Mother wants it, so please keep criticism and rudeness inside.... please and thank you.

[manono]

How would I do that?

One way is with AviSynth's Warpedresize:

http://www.volter.net/avisynth_en/externalfilters/simpleresize.htm

We all have our own preferences for things and this is how my Mother wants it...

We teach you so you can teach your mother. This is a site for video encoding enthusiasts. If we're going to teach people how to do things, we like to teach them how to do them right. This doesn't include teaching them how to purposely wreck the aspect ratio, although Khavar and I have now shown you how to do just that.