4:3 to 16:9 Suggestions

[glynnkjk]

Hello All, I'm a newbee that just started using ffmpegx because of a g3 processor---

I have a dv camera and wanted to put the movies to dvd. Well, I have iMovie so i figured, no problem---RIGHT!!! After finding out that iDVD was not supported by g3's I turn to the net and after trying several programs I came across this one.

Now I loaded the dv into iMovie and saved a DV file to my computer and encoded it to a dvd it took about a day and a half but it turned out great--chapters, titles ect....But what I want to do now is change the format to HD or 16:9 I have the .m2v file, the mpg file and the .ac3 file.

In the ffmpegx drop zone which do I use and what setting do you recommend for audio and whatever is needed for high density?

[Case]

For 4:3 to 16:9 you'd need to crop and loose some of the image. Can your footage miss 25% ?

[glynnkjk]

Thats not a problem 25% is fine but i have no clue about cropping--

I'll try reading some of the older posts and see what they have to offer unless you have the instructions in your back pocket.

[Case]

In the Filters tab, set the Crop values to [60 60 0 0]: 12.5% of the 480 px height, for both top and bottom. In the Video tab, set autosize to [DVD 16:9]. Since you basicly scaling interlaced material (i.e. DV), it will have a noticable effect on quality. So try a short clip first.

[wwaag]

Another Alternative.

I've had a similar problem--roughly 20 years of 4:3 home videos (68 2hr DVDs) to display on a 65" 16:9 Mitsubishi. While you can crop, you do lose info and suffer a loss in quality, especially if you try to display on a large TV. Plus, if you've got a lot of material like I do, it's pretty time-consuming.

My solution has been a $90 Panasonic DVD player (when I bought it, I didn't know it had this capability). For 4:3 materials on a 16:9 TV, it has a "shrink" display mode. Basicallly, it maintains the correct aspect, by putting black bars on the sides. The black bars are actually not that large since you are now displaying the horizontal "overscan" area as well, so you are actually displaying more information than normal. It also has an incremental zoom capability (e.g. 101%, 102%, etc. unlike others that have simply 2x or 4x, etc.). By setting the zoom to 110%, the black bars on the edges are very small, while minimizing the information lost in the vertical. There must be others that have this capability, although my 4 other players do not. They simply display a 4:3 image to a full 16:9 thereby stretching the image, in which case, you must use the TV's modes to correct (which are pretty terrible, especially for home videos).

Just a suggestion.

wwaag