MPG to AVI - wide screen lost

[Olliver]

Using Virtualdub mpeg-2

MPG file info "Frame Size" is 480x480, 29.970 fps

when converting to DivX (tried both 4.12 and 5.11) wide screen is lost.

what I dont understand is how it can be wide screen in MPG, thougt 480x480 was not wide screen

anywhere I can configure to keep wide screen format??

[teegee420]

It needs to be cropped and resized. Post a screen cap of a frame of the movie so we can try and figure out what aspect ratio is. Once that is determined you just need to resize to a resolution with the same aspect ratio. The black bars will need to be cropped too.

[teegee420]

Tell you what, if you want to do things the quick way you can add the resize filter select 352x480, use Lanczos resize and re-encode as normal. It's just better to crop out the black bars so that the bitrate isn't wasted on empty space.

[Olliver]

All worked out fine using Tegee's advice!

Additional question,

Having an DivX file with wrong ratio, square instead of wide screen. Is there any quality loss re-encoding to DivX again and cropping in the same way as with the mpg file?

[teegee420]

There's always going to be quality loss when re-encoding an already compressed file. You can attempt to keep things to a minimum by using a decent bitrate. I would characterize a good divx/xvid bitrate as being greater than 1000kbps.

[sacajaweeda]

what I dont understand is how it can be wide screen in MPG, thougt 480x480 was not wide screen

You can do anything you want with your 480 vertical. Horizontal is irrelevant really in as much as your image is going to be stretched to fit the screen.