Easy ways of Letterboxing?

[Maximoan]

I have a great quality AC3 XVID encode thats stretched out of shape when I play it on my standalone divx player because it's in 2.35:1 ratio and the screen is 16:9.

Having done some research I thought I could simply add the letterboxing with virtualdub using an AVISynth script and in turn avoid having to lose any quality by re-encoding but its not working.

AVISource("C:\example.avi")
AddBorders(0,32,0,32)

Opening the above script in virtualdub I get "AVISynth open failure, ACM failed to suggest a compatible PCM format"

Anyone know how I can solve this problem or suggest an easy way to add letterboxing to my XVID files without re-encoding them or at least maintain quality as much as possible?

Oh and please remember I have posted this in the newbie section for a reason! Thanks!!

[skeg64]

Use virtualdub's resize filter. Check this guide for the size you should use:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=174200&highlight=

[Maximoan]

Thanks Skeg64 but that was the first thing I tried.

Would work a treat if I didn't have to choose some sort of compression when running the resize/expand borders filter.

The size is 640x272 and everything looks lovely when I set the resize to 640x272 and then expand the borders to 640x340 but I don't want to lose any quality by re-encoding/compressing.

Now if you can see that I'm missing something obvious or know of some settings to maintain the quality then we're in business!

Suggestions?

[guns1inger]

I wouold check the manual for your player, as many players can adjust themselevs for the odd variety of Xvid/Divx file resolutions that abound.

[Maximoan]

Cheers, but I already tried that too!

No fancy settings I'm afraid.

Any other ideas?

[skeg64]

leave it as uncompressed RGB and frameserve to your mpeg encoder?
edit
sorry, just noticed you might not be converting to DVD. you want to leave it as XVID?

[Paul Glagla]

The open failure message seems to come from the audio part of your video file (PCM...) and not really from addborders. What kind of audio do you use in this clip?

This suggests also that you could try to get the video stream separate from audio, apply the script to it, and remux with audio.

[Maximoan]

Sounds like a plan.

The clip is AC3.

I tried selecting no audio in virtualdub before loading the script but the same thing happened.

Do I need to add something to the script to remove the audio?

Assuming I get that far how do I use virtualdub to remux?