Adding letterbox bars to DV or MPEG video

[dewaynespaw]

Hello everyone,
Is there a good (preferrable cheap or free) program that will add black letterbox bars to DV or MPEG video after all color adjustments have been made? I would rather do it at the DV level before converting to MPEG. I guess it don't matter that much, either one.

[Stormin Norman]

Frameserve with Avisynth to mpeg encoder. Make script with source file, then load script into encoder.

[dewaynespaw]

Are there any guides on this site about how to do that. You lost me at the word frameserve.

[daamon]

Hi dewaynespaw,

You should be able to do it, at the DV AVI level, in VirtualDub. Having not done it myself, I don't know for sure nor do I know how it's done - I would imagine it'd involve cropping the picture somehow.

Look up VirtualDub in the "Tools" section and browse through the guides listed below it.

I only mention it as something for you to look into.

A simple explanation of frameserving is: One application opens the video file and "serves" (provides) frames to another application as and when the second application needs or requests them.

There are benefits to doing this:

1. It's all done via memory (so you need a decent amount) and avoids writing a potentially large file to disk, hence goos if you have limited disk space.

2. It means that the second application, which may not be able to open the file, can still be used on the file.

Hope that helps. Good luck...