Can one chop black bars on top and bottom of 4x3 video file?

[markandjenn]

I recently purchased a new portable DVD player and I transferred some recordings from my TiVo of Battlestar Galactica to watch on a recent plane trip. The DVD player is not a fancy player with every bell and whistle, so my playback options are limited. For the most part, the DVD player will be used to watch commercial DVDs and will work fine, but what I found was that the picture of the transfer was stretched horizontally to fill the screen. Personally, I find the distorted picture to be annoying, but watchable. What I would porefer is to watch the show in its original aspect ration. Obviously, the TiVo records in a 4x3 aspect ratio and when the recording is viewed on this player the picture is stretched horizontally to fit the 16x9 screen.

Since BSG is shown in letterbox (16x9) I was wondering, is there any software out there that can be used to “chop off” the top and bottom black bars, thereby creating a 16x9 picture that can then be transcoded and recorded to DVD in an 16x9 format?

Also conversely, is there software out there that can add vertical back bars to the sides of a picture to show 4x3 content in its original aspect ratio without stretching the picture?

[Dragonsf]

Use avisynth, which can do it all.

[guns1inger]

Just cutting off the bars isn't enough. You will also have to resize correctly before (or as part of) the encode. Same when pillarboxing.

[Dragonsf]

Just cutting off the bars isn't enough. You will also have to resize correctly before (or as part of) the encode. Same when pillarboxing.

yes, if you want to create an anamorphic DVD (don't forget to set the A/R correctly). You can create a DivX directly (which can beplayed on certain DVD players
)