Crop Black Bars from Letterboxed Star Wars (original) DVDs

[thefinalprophecy]

I bought the new star wars dvd set that came out this week, and as bonus features, it includes the original unaltered star wars films. this is great, but the only downside is that the films are 2.35:1 inside a 4:3 letterbox! what is the best way to crop out the bars once it is ripped to computer?

is there any way to do this without having to re-encode the whole movie (and therefore lose quality)? also, is there a way to do this while preserving the whole menu structure so that I can burn it back to DVD-R?

Thanks!

[manono]

Hi-

In my opinion, you wasted your money. Are the original untouched films on DVD really worth a shoddy widescreen non-anamorphic 4:3 presentation? I think what George Lucas did here is simply inexcusable, and there's no way I'll give him even more of my money. But, that said:

what is the best way to crop out the bars once it is ripped to computer?

AviSynth. If NTSC:

Crop(0,60,0,-60)
Lanczos4Resize(720,480)

Encode for 16:9. They'll still have lots of black bars remaining, as they're 2.35:1.

is there any way to do this without having to re-encode the whole movie (and therefore lose quality)?

No, and you'll lose more quality than just from reencoding. Converting them from 4:3 to 16:9 will make them look lousy. There's just not enough resolution available in a widescreen 4:3 DVD. If you have a 4:3 TV set, there's no point to the exercise anyway. If you have a 16:9 TV set, they'll look best pillarboxed for 4:3 presentation. If you insist on zooming in to fill the screen left to right, then the only reason to convert to 16:9 is if your DVD player or TV set have lousy zoom features (very common, though).

also, is there a way to do this while preserving the whole menu structure so that I can burn it back to DVD-R?

Yes, a simple matter using the "Replace" button in VobBlanker when the new 16:9 version is finished encoding and authoring.

[j1d10t]

Converting them from 4:3 to 16:9 will make them look lousy. There's just not enough resolution available in a widescreen 4:3 DVD.

What method are you using? I've done this with many of my DVDs that are not available in animorphic widescreen and they look great. Much better than using the zoom setting on my (widescreen) TV or DVD player.... This is what I'm planning to do with my SW DVDs, too.

And before you re-encode, I'd run the disc through DVDShrink to shrink the menus down some - that way you'll have more room for the movie.....

[kush]

The more recent versions of DVD Rebuilder do menu encoding as well - although I think that's a Pro version only feature...

[edit] It is Pro only - http://jdobbs.com/Pages/DVDRebuilder/DVD-RB_Adv.htm

[Noahtuck]

What's really pathetic is why would you want to hack off/out 50% + of the video just to fill up the whole screen or because you don't like the black bars on the top and bottom

[thefinalprophecy]

No, I just want to crop off the empty black space that is on the footage. there wouldnt be any stretching, resizing, or anything that should cause major quality loss. i dont even see what the point of making anything Letterboxed is, since playing a widescreen movie on a fullscreen TV will give u the exact same looking result.

[gshelley61]

I suppose for those who were planning on doing Star Wars Trilogy Definitive Collection laserdisc conversions to DVD, buying this new set with the letterbox transfer of the original versions would save a huge amount of time and probably looks much better than what can be done at home.

It still really sucks that Lucas won't do a proper anamorphic transfer of the original theatrical releases.

[j1d10t]

No, I just want to crop off the empty black space that is on the footage. there wouldnt be any stretching, resizing.

There will be resizing - if you want to make a 4:3 picture 16x9 you will have to cut off 60 pixels from the top and bottom and then resize it vertically from 360 to 480. But that's not too bad.

[quote-"Noahtuck"]What's really pathetic is why would you want to hack off/out 50% + of the video just to fill up the whole screen or because you don't like the black bars on the top and bottom[/quote]
Some people really like (4:3) "full frame".... Why? I don't know, but they do

[thefinalprophecy]

so is this just not worth doing? is there a guide out there that someone could point me to? I didn't see one on VideoHelp.com really. Coding with AVI synth isn't really something I can do, and the GUI I downloaded for it *AVSGenie* is giving me all kinds of DLL version errors when i run it.

[Marco33]

so is this just not worth doing? is there a guide out there that someone could point me to? I didn't see one on VideoHelp.com really. Coding with AVI synth isn't really something I can do, and the GUI I downloaded for it *AVSGenie* is giving me all kinds of DLL version errors when i run it.

I was thinking of doing the same thing 4:3 to 16:9 so it will look right on my WS set. People talk about it a lot and I've yet too see it work.

Crop(0,60,0,-60)
Lanczos4Resize(720,480)

Works but it looks like hell... tried it today already.

[thefinalprophecy]

Damn. That was the main reason I bought this set. I already own the 2004 DVD release set. I never knew it would be such a problem to crop off black space...

[j1d10t]

so is this just not worth doing? is there a guide out there that someone could point me to? I didn't see one on VideoHelp.com really. Coding with AVI synth isn't really something I can do, and the GUI I downloaded for it *AVSGenie* is giving me all kinds of DLL version errors when i run it.

I use VOB2MPEG after I rip the DVD, then open the MPG files in VirtualDub MPEG, do all the croping, resizing, etc, then frameserve to my MPEG encoder. Then author with an authoring program, then use VOBBlanker to replace the movie from the original ripped DVD, so I get to keep the menus.

You can even reencode the audio to a lower bitrate AC3 file with ffmpegGUI, so you can up the bitrate of the video even more. I haven't done this on 5.1 audio files, only on mono and stereo.

I've done this with about 10-12 movies, ranging from 2.35:1 to 1.66:1 aspect ratio and so far they have all looked great. It's not really difficult, once you get the hang of it, it's just time consuming.

[guns1inger]

DVD Rebuilder pro has an option to convert matted letterbox widescreen to 16:9, as well as compress to DVD5 if you need (or you can target for DVD9 and just convert). The avisynth method is simple and works, however you then have to either ditch the menus, or put your changed version back in. DVD Rebuilder Pro will take care of all of this for you.

[Marco33]

DVD Rebuilder "pro"?

I don't see where it says "pro".

[guns1inger]

This link was posted earlier in the discussion

http://jdobbs.com/Pages/DVDRebuilder/DVD-RB_Adv.htm

It links to the author's main site. The link in the tools section is for the freeware version only.

[Marco33]

Did some looking around. They don't really push it but, you have to pay to upgrade to "pro". Got it.

[wwaag]

How about subtitles?? There was a very long thread a few years ago on doing Star Wars conversions from laserdisc. I have the original laserdisc trilogy in which the subtitles were hard-encoded into the lower black bar. Don't know if it's an issue with the new DVD release, but it's worth checking. At that time, if you wanted to encode 16:9, you also had to manually redo the subtitles.

BTW, if subtitles are not an issue, isn't it a lot easier to simply hit "zoom" on either your DVD player or TV? There are usually settings designed specifically for displaying these 2.35 widescreen anamorhic 4:3 images on 16:9 display--at least mine do. Good luck.

wwaag

[manono]

It doesn't hurt to try, thefinalprophesy. All you are risking is some time and maybe a blank DVDR. I'd recommend the free version of DVD Rebuilder. It can do the conversion from widescreen 4:3 to 16:9 for you. It's easier to get going if you get it with the full installer. There are lots of guides around, but here's one which has a pic of how you get it to do the conversion:

http://www.doom9.org/mpg/dvdrb.htm

Just don't expect any miracles. And don't expect all the black bars to be gone.

[jagabo]

It still really sucks that Lucas won't do a proper anamorphic transfer of the original theatrical releases.

Lucas will suck all the money he can out of those who'll buy the letterboxed versions. Then he'll sell them the anamorphic versions.

[guns1inger]

Then he'll release the 3D versions at the cinema - one every two or three years, then release boxsets of these (complete with Bobba Fett helmet with the 3D glasses built-in) over the subsequent decade.

And you suckers will buy it every time (and probably bitch about it as well)

[manono]

And you suckers will buy it every time (and probably bitch about it as well)

Hehe, I won't buy, but I'll sure as hell bitch. I can understand people wanting them the way they were shown in the theater oh so many years ago, without all the later "improvements" by Lucas and his crew. Me, I don't care so much, and am happy with the boxset I bought a couple of years ago. I suspect jagabo's right about 16:9 versions of the theatrical releases at some point down the road. Probably Hi-Def versions in a couple of years.

[wulf109]

They are also available full screen,if you don't want the letterboxing.

[j1d10t]

But with full frame you lose sooooo much of the picture, especially on a movie with a really wide AR, like 2.35:1, or 2.40:1.

And about the subtitles in ANH, aside from Greedo talking to Han, there aren't any others, are there? Then there are some in ROTJ, with Jabba, but other than that.... It's been a long, long time since I've seen the non-SE versions of the OT....

[thefinalprophecy]

It still really sucks that Lucas won't do a proper anamorphic transfer of the original theatrical releases.

Lucas will suck all the money he can out of those who'll buy the letterboxed versions. Then he'll sell them the anamorphic versions.

I am trying this way right now. Seems the easiest, and I have heard good things about DVD Rebuilder. I have been using DVD Shrink for some time, but I will try DVD Rebuilder PRO with the CCE plugin.

Hopefully DVD rebuilder is multithread enhanced so it can take advantage of my pentium D the same way that DVD shrink did.

[Marco33]

I can't get DVD rebuilder to work but, here is the script I believe its using to convert 4:3 to 16X9.

LanczosResize(720,480,0,60,720,360)
ConvertToYUY2()
AudioDub(BlankClip())

[Marco33]

Ok, this seems to work great for me.

Dvd2dvdr "the program"
CCE 2.5 as the external encoder.

On the mpeg encoder tab:
Encoder options all un-checked except Force film.
Aspect Ratio 16:9

Additional entries to AVS script
LanczosResize(720,480,0,60,720,360)
ConvertToYUY2()
AudioDub(BlankClip())

Looks good on a small 20 second clip I did. A close up with a smooth pan across screen. Will try the whole film.

[yoda313]

BUMP!

Hey I was going to try this with ifoedit and just change the flag from 4:3 to 16:9. I don't have a widescreen tv to test it on but I can ceratainly test it on my computer monitor.

I'll report back with my results...

EDIT - Ok first try didnt' work. I tried switching the flags and created new ifos but that didn't do anything. Must be something more to this. I really haven't used ifoedit much.

EDIT 2 - I think I might have done it! It now says 16:9 not letterboxed in powerdvd. The first time I only changed the aspect ratio on the video_ts ifo. This time I changed each individual ifo to 16:9. Now i don't know if this works perfectly or not but I'm going to loan these to my brother in law who has an hdtv. He has all the star wars dvds too. I just want to make sure this process works. (I don't know about subtitles since I don't have a widescreen monitor on my computer to test completely.

[thefinalprophecy]

did this ever work for anyone? i never got it to work.