Aspec Ratio Problem DVD Rip to XVCD

[sherman]

I am trying to convert a rip of the new James Bond Movie to XVCD 480X480 resoluion but I cannot get it to look right.

It appears the movie is neither 16:9 or 4:3 but is letterboxed to 16:9. I will be playing back my XVCD on a Stand Alone with 4:3 TV or on computer using POwerDVD.

I have tried setting TMPGRnc to both 16:9 and 4:3 and ful screen and full screen (keep aspect ratio) but none of these will play back looking the same as the orignal movie in PowerDVD. I use the opening sequence with the white balls going across the screen to check for the correct aspect ratio.

Sherman

[FulciLives]

I am trying to convert a rip of the new James Bond Movie to XVCD 480X480 resoluion but I cannot get it to look right.

It appears the movie is neither 16:9 or 4:3 but is letterboxed to 16:9. I will be playing back my XVCD on a Stand Alone with 4:3 TV or on computer using POwerDVD.

I have tried setting TMPGRnc to both 16:9 and 4:3 and ful screen and full screen (keep aspect ratio) but none of these will play back looking the same as the orignal movie in PowerDVD. I use the opening sequence with the white balls going across the screen to check for the correct aspect ratio.

Sherman

Well 480x480 is not a proper 4:3 ratio. This is usually only used for SVCD where the player (be it stand alone or software) knows ahead of time that the the source is 480x480 and knows to stretch it to fit a 4:3 display correctly.

Why don't you just cut off the black borders (this is the widescreen version of the movie I hope) and encode at 640x272 (which will most likely be the correct aspect ratio after cropping based on the fact that the movie has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1).

This is a long movie so trying to make it fit on a single CD-R disc is not realistic as the image will not be up to snuff unless you spread it out over 2 CD-R discs.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Try using GORDIAN KNOT as that makes selecting the proper resolution (along with cropping) very easy. You can find an excellent guide on how to use GORDIAN KNOT over at the DOOM9 website.

[vhelp]

Hi sherman..

unfortunately, MPEG-1 (hence your xvcd) does not support TRUE 16:9
ratios encodes from TMPG. In other words, you can not use TMPG to
encode TO 16:9. Instead, you have to 4:3 it.. aka, fake it w/ 4:3.

MPEG-2 supports TRUE 16:9. Perhaps you would try that ??
Unless your DVD player oly plays xvcd's that I don't know what else
ta tell you.

Good luck thus far
-vhelp

[FulciLives]

I must apologize ... when I first read this I mis-read what says XVCD as XVID

Duh!

I feel stupid

I have made XVCD discs with a 480x480 resolution. This is not a problem if the original source is 4:3 (letterboxed or not no difference) but when the source is 16x9 then it gets a bit tricky ... especially if you ONLY have a 4:3 display device.

As I recall you have to use an AVISynth AVS script to do the following:

This assums the source is 720x480 for NTSC and 720x576 for PAL

For NTSC (720x480) resize in the AVS script to 720x352 then do the AddBorders command and add 64 to the top and bottom. This will get you back to 720x480 and in effect make your 16x9 source a 4:3 source.

For PAL (720x576) resize in the AVS script to 720x422 then do the AddBorders command and add 77 to the top and bottom. This will get you back to 720x576 and in effect make your 16x9 source a 4:3 source.

Using this "trick" with TMPGEnc I was able to make a XVCD with a resolution of 480x480 and I think I used a video bitrate of 2200kbps and a MP2 audio bitrate of 224kbps.

In short TMPGEnc has trouble resizing a 16x9 source when using an "oddball" ratio like 480x480 but when I made my 16x9 source 4:3 (or if using a true 4:3 source) then TMPGEnc seems to have no trouble. I think I used FULL SCREEN (KEEP ASPECT RATIO 2) as my VIDEO ARRANGE METHOD.

My stand alone DVD player (a Cyberhome CH-DVD 500) was able to play such discs without problems although it couldn't handle a properly made SVCD ... hence my reason for using XVCD.

Gee I hope I redeemed myself

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

Sample AVISynth AVS script for TMPGEnc (NTSC 16x9 Source):

LoadPlugin("C:\mpeg2dec3.dll")
mpeg2source("D:\DVDVolume\VIDEO_TS\movie.d2v")
crop(0,0,720,480)
LanczosResize(720,352)
AddBorders(0,64,0,64)

Good Luck