Simple way

[agent222]

Is there a simple-preferably one step, method to convert a widescreen movie into a full screen movie? I seem to recall that one of the freeware tools allow you to do this with prerecorded discs, but can't remember which one. Also is there a method that will allow you to do this with video files that you have on your computer? (I know that is off topic for this portion of the forums, but it's related.)

Thanks to anyone who helps.

[guns1inger]

Are you talking about 4:3 letter box, or just cropping off then ends and blowing it up ? And if the latter, why do it ?

[Baldrick]

No one-step way.

[agent222]

Gunslinger; pardon my ignorance, but am unsure as to what you mean. I want to take wide screen formatted videoes, and, resize them to full screen. Reason? I don't have a tv where widescreen looks attractive to me. Most of the widescreen I find leave way too much black area.
Baldrick; if not one step, is there at least a relatively simple way of doing this?

[junkmalle]

There are only two ways to convert wide screen to full screen: squish and crop.

wide:


crop:


squish:


Which do you want? What tools do you have? And what is your final destination? DVD?

[stalyon]

I'd like to do this as well, but resize to a wide screen tv (16.9).

[agent222]

Squish would be normally fine, and, yes the final destination after conversion to fullscreen, would be to make a "backup" to another DVD, and, in teh case of video files to convert, then burn, to DVD.

[junkmalle]

Squish would be normally fine, and, yes the final destination after conversion to fullscreen, would be to make a "backup" to another DVD, and, in teh case of video files to convert, then burn, to DVD.

For anamorphic 16:9 DVD to 4:3 DVD I think IFOEdit will work:

http://archive.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=482247

There will probably still be small black bars at the top and bottom because most widescreen movies are wider than 16:9. If you want to completely get rid of the black bars you'll have to reencode the movie and remaster the DVD.

[manono]

You really want to encode it with bad Aspect Ratio? Mindboggling. It's easy to do what both of you want. Personally, I would never teach anyone how to butcher their movies, and I suggest that no one else do it either.

Films are meant to be seen in OAR (Original Aspect Ratio). Even if watching on a 13" TV, I prefer the original widescreen.

And stalyon is whining because 2.35:1 movies still have some black bars showing on his nice widescreen TV set? Sheesh.

[stalyon]

I didn't mean to come across as a whiner. I'm just interested in seeing if this will work. I love movies in OAR, but if I can have both...I will.

[manono]

As junkmalle showed earlier, you can crop 2.35:1 movies and maintain AR, or you can display them with bad AR. It's one or the other.

I saw your other thread (and responded) about DivX 2.35:1 movies being stretched by your Philips player. That's a problem with that player, for sure. In that case you can encode with black bars remaining above and below in order to keep AR. For example, say you have a 640x272 2.35:1 AVI movie. You want to make it 1.78:1 to fill your screen You make it 640x360 (1.78:1). To do that in Avisynth you AddBorders:

AddBorders(0,44,0,44)

That will add additional black bars above and below to keep your player from stretching the movie. 360 is only Mod 8, and goes against the general Mod 16 rule, but it should work. Other players with different chipsets don't have your problem when displaying AVI to a widescreen TV. The player will add the black bars in order to keep the AR. That's one reason (but only 1) why the Philips DVP-642 is a piece of junk.