Resizing odd resolution movies

[Fr33m4n]

Resizing has to be one of the hardest things to get right when converting a avi file to dvd. I don't think I've ever had one of the standard resolutions that are explained in the guides on one of my moviclips. It would be nice if someone could point me in the direction of a guide to explain it properly, mainly I don't understand how you know if you should put 4:3 or 16:9 in the encoding programs. I usually allways put 16:9 since I'm dealing with movies despite their odd resolutions.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I usually have FitCD create my avisynth script and it resizes for me automatically so I don't have to worrie about that but this time I've got a movie that seems to have a resolution FitCD dosn't like and there fore it puts black bars on the side (left & right) which is something I definitely don't want.

So basically what this whole thing boils down to is how should I resize a movie with a resolution of:

576x448

to make it look good. I should probably tell you that this is a anime clip made for tv so it probably was 4:3 at one point. Furtheremore it is 23.9fps and even though I live in a PAL country my player reads 24fps just fine so I don't know if I have to do a framerateconversion?

Here's the script I have now:

# -= AviSynth v2.0.8.0 script by FitCD v1.2.8 =-
AVISource("H:\session21.avi")
BicubicResize(688,480,0,0.6,0,4,576,440)
AddBorders(16,0,16,0)
#Trim(0,35678).FadeOut(150)
ConvertToYUY2() # For VirtualDub or CCE

What should it really look like?

[kschang]

One thing you have to watch for... FitCD's script but off the bottom of my video. And I haven't figured out if it's my standalone player or my TV, but one of them is cutting off the sides as well. :P

[Fr33m4n]

FitCD's script but off the bottom of my video.

Huh? oh wait, do you mean "cut"? I haven't noticed that but then again I haven't been looking for it. Regardless, I'm still confused about this one.

[guns1inger]

kschang - fitcd's scrip doesn't cut anything off. You are experiencing overscan (llok it up in the glossery). You can adjust for this if you need to by adding black borders all the way around in FitCD. Note : all television shows, DVDs etc have the edges covered by overscan, so you are not really missing anything.

Fr33m4n - the problem you have is that the aspect ratio is taller than a standard 4:3 television. To compensate for this, black bars must be added to the edges or the image will be stretched out of shape. As it is only slightly taller, these bars will be almost totally hidden in the overscan area of your TV, so you probably wont even notice them. But to assure you and put your mind at rest, FitCD is correct. Also, I would leave it NTSC if you can play it.

[kschang]

kschang - fitcd's scrip doesn't cut anything off. You are experiencing overscan (llok it up in the glossery). You can adjust for this if you need to by adding black borders all the way around in FitCD. Note : all television shows, DVDs etc have the edges covered by overscan, so you are not really missing anything.

I know about overscan, guns1inger... This was CUT. The reason I noticed is it's along the bottom (where the letterbox black bars were added) and I lost about 8 pixels of the Karaoke text that was originally along the bottom. I'll have to find that "bad" VCD and get you a screenshot, but that AVISynth script definitely had the "trim" optional arguments as a part of resize.

On the other hand, I could have just missed used one of those sliders. Those are tricky.

[Fr33m4n]

Alright, thx guns1inger. Guess I'm stuck with the bars then.

[jagabo]

The arguments for BilinearResize() removed 4 scanlines off the top and bottom of the frame before resizing what's left.

[Fr33m4n]

The arguments for BilinearResize() removed 4 scanlines off the top and bottom of the frame before resizing what's left.

So it effectivly crops the movie? Isn't that bad? How can I prevent that from happening. I want all of my video. Should I use Lanczos instead? I heared there is a quality difference, is that true? If so which one is better?

[jagabo]

The arguments for BilinearResize() removed 4 scanlines off the top and bottom of the frame before resizing what's left.

So it effectivly crops the movie? Isn't that bad? How can I prevent that from happening. I want all of my video. Should I use Lanczos instead? I heared there is a quality difference, is that true? If so which one is better?

Oops, sorry it was BicubicResize(), not BilinearResize(). But the cropping issue is the same.

All you have to do is remove the extra arguments that are causing the cropping:

BicubicResize(688,480,0,0.6)

There will be a slight difference in aspect ratio though. Not worth worrying about in my opinion.

I'd use LanczosResize(688,480) because it's just as sharp but less prone to moire artifacts.