Letterbox SVCD to 16:9 DVD

[locuester]

I have a SVCD version of a movie (I'm not sure if it's marked as widescreen or not, or if SVCD can even be marked...) that I need to convert to DVD. The SVCD is letterboxed and I want to chop off the letter box part of the SVCD and make it a 16:9 DVD.

What is the fastest and best way to do this? I tried using flask mpeg to crop and resize, but it said it was going to take 720 hours. I'm not waiting that long!

Loc

[Anonymoususer]

try to crop using TMPGEnc maybe it could help...

[locuester]

I had no clue that you could crop using tmpeg... I looked all over for that feature. Maybe it's new? I'll look around.

[Anonymoususer]

Im not sure though BUT I do remember reading about Cropping with TMPGEnc somehwhere...

[md_mushroom]

i think u can do this through tmgenc, when u open up tmpgenc, wizard appears, select wat u want to convert to, svcd, vcd or dvd, click next, select your source, click on next again, and tick on Clip Frame, now at the bottom u have - Top, Bottom, Left , Right, i have opened out a svcd, vcd with these settings and seem to work ok, let me know if this helps.

Max

[Anonymoususer]

There you go..

[suerpflysocal]

But can you clip (SVCD) without re-encoding?

Please help.

Also, i loaded an SVCD on TMPEG but it says file not supported. I am using TMPEG Plus 2.58. Should I use an older version?


I would like to turn an SVCD to a 640x272 XVCD without any re-encoding.

[suerpflysocal]

i meant 480 x 272

[Faceman101]

That would be a total waste of time.


If you really want to re-encode your SVCD you are going to have to upsample the audio to 48 instead of 44.1. Just video wise, demux the SVCD and load the M2V into TMPGEnc and encode with either 352x480 or 720x480 res size. If it is letterboxed already, to get a 16:9 DVD out of it would you would need to crop out some or all of the letterboxing (depending on the aspect ratio) and then stretch the remaining video to 720x480.

It's really not worth it. Between the loss of quality and the time and effort it would take.

If anything, just re-encode the SVCD into a 720x480 MPG2.

[suerpflysocal]

The reason is that the SVCD is excellent quality and I don't want to do any re-encoding, just turn it into a 480 x 288 XSVCD which my TV and DVD player will handle fine. ANy reencoding will make it worst.

[2573]

RE-ENCODIG WITH TMPGENC, the only thing you have to do is, in the "aspect radio" box, select 16:9 pal screen, then your movie will be 16:9.

[suerpflysocal]

what if all i want is to clip without reencoding?

[DJRumpy]

You cannot edit an MPEG like this. MPEG by it's very nature is not an editable format. There are very few things you can change on the video stream, including DAR (aspect ratio), Field Order, Streams included, Pulldown. You cannot cut out a piece of the video image, without re-encoding. Before you ask, the SVCD standard does not support a 16:9 aspect ratio flag, although may players will play it back properly. It's also no a problem to simply squeeze a 16:9 aspect ratio into a 4:3 Aspect Ratio SVCD movie, and have it display properly on a 16:9 tv. The image is 16:9, but the aspect ratio is set to 4:3 to keep it in spec.

I convert my old SVCD's to CCIR-601 (720x480) all the time. There is no noticable loss in quality, assuming your SVCD is good quality to begin with. Note, I said 'noticable', as you already know, re-encoding always looses detail. The increase in resolution on my HDTV, makes up for any loss in detail introduced during the conversion.

The horizontal resolution is irrelevant, as your video will be stretched to the correct width/height, according to your format MPEG's aspect ratio (DAR) setting (i.e it doesn't remain a true square 480x480 during playback of an SVCD). The horizontal resolution is irrelevant for this disucssion.


That said, if you want to encode an SVCD as 16:9, or DVD for that matter, then you need to adjust your letterboxing. A common misconception is that 16:9 video has no letterboxing. This is not true. Depending on your source aspect ratio, it could indeed have letterboxing.

If your movie's aspect ratio is 2.35:1, then you need to resize the vertical to 356, with the remaining top and bottom filled with letterboxing (62 pixels high on top, 62 pixels high on bottom) to get the full 480 vertical.

If your movie's aspect ratio is 1.85:1, then you simply resize your video to it's full 480 vertical, with NO letterboxing.

If your movie is 1.33:1, then your movie is already 4:3, and no amount of twisting will make it look 'right' in 16:9.

Remember that these settings are intended for an MPEG with a 16:9 DAR flag, not a 4:3 DAR flag. If you use a 4:3, you'll get a squashed movie on playback.

[Faceman101]

Exactly what was going through my head, but could not get it on paper. I'm better at explaining in person.

[DJRumpy]

I've had practive, answering this same question 5 or six times. In a few months, I should have it down to 1 or two sentences at this rate.