aspect ratio converting 4:3 to 16:9

[hhhhbk]

at a lan party i got a stack of new media (avis) but sadly some of the vids were capped in 4:3 when they were meant to be 16:9

i know and have done this using a resize filter in virtual dub which is very straight forward

my question is say the source 4:3 avi is 640x480
is the resized 16:9 avi best off as a 640x360 ie just altering the height
or is it better as some other 16:9 aspect ratio

[DJRumpy]

It depends on whether or not your AVI's are letterboxed.

To properly convert it to a 16:9 fomat, without 'squishing' the images, then you would have to chop off the top and bottom of the video.

There are a few widescreen aspect ratio's to choose from, with 1.77 being the closest to 4:3 ( 4 / 3 = 1.333 decimal ).

2.35
1.85
1.77 (16:9)

If your video is letterboxed, then the solution is simple. Chop off the letterboxing, according to whatever the video aspect is supposed to be. If the video is NOT letterboxed, then you must choose whether or not you can put up with everyone looking a bit squished, or chop off some of the top and bottom video area to convert it to 16:9.