Re-sizing MPEG-2 captures

[Baron_Samedi]

Hi,

I have a movie, recorded off-air using the Nebula Digitv and I have a concern.

The aspect ratio of the channel I recorded from is 16:9 but the movie is old and was displayed in my capture as 4:3 with black side bars out to the normal 16:9 screen size.

My question is this:

Is there a way I can strip off the side bars to leave the MPEG-2 file as a 4:3 aspect ration file?

I'm interested to learn the software needed and the procedure

Thanks!

[flaninacupboard]

no, you need to do a re-encode. assuming your end product is DVD, then load it up in (i assume you're using TMPGEnc) use the clip frame tool to clip the borders, set the input aspect ratio to 16X9, the output ratio to 4:3 and the arrange method to fullscreen (keep aspect ratio). click file then preview, and this will show you how your final file will appear. i'm assuimg your capture was at 720X576(480 for NTSC) so you'll have lost about a third of the horizontal resolution to the borders meaning the image is 480X576(480 for NTSC) after clipping. this is SVCD resolution if that's what you want to make, but if it's DVD then i'd advise you use the ouput resolution of 352X576(480) as this will give the best results, and is DVD compliant.

[Baron_Samedi]

Many thanks for your info!

When you say re-encode, what process is that and what software should I use?

I get the bit with TMPGenc (I've used that a bit) but I'm not sure how I should present it with the file,

Cheers!

[Baron_Samedi]

Oops, I've since learnt that I can frameserve from VirtualDub into TMPGenc to get what I need having used a filter to crop the bars...

Thanks!