4:3 - 16:9

[uno]

Is it possible to convert a 4:3 avi-file to a 16:9 format and have black bars to the left and right so the picture is correctly shown. I want to do this as it it seems to be impossible to combine the two formats in Pinnacle and make a file with both formats.
What I do today is that I change the 4:3-parts to 16:9 and get wrong proportions in the picture for the 4:3-parts when I see it on TV. Of course I can then manually change the picture on the TV but that is not very practical.

[mats.hogberg]

I you're takling about creating a Video DVD, you can mix 4:3 and 16:9 mtrl on the same disk, in separate titles. If Pinnacle allows for this I don't know.
But of course you could encode a 4:3 video into a 16:9 "container" if you must.

/Mats

[uno]

I only know how to make 4:3 to 16:9 and fill the whole 16:9 "container". This gives wrong proportions.
Do you know if it is possible to fill the 16:9 container with black on left and right?

[manono]

Hi-

Do you know if it is possible to fill the 16:9 container with black on left and right?

Sure it is. Using AviSynth and a 640x480 AVI source:

LanczosResize(528,480)
AddBorders(96,0,96,0)

That says to add 96 colums of pixels to both the left and right sides after resizing the AVI to 528x480. You add in that 192 worth of pixels bringing the final resolution up to 720x480. Encode for 16:9. You can also do similar things in VDub, and then frameserve out to the MPEG-2 encoder, although AviSynth is by far the better way to do this.

You'll notice that the AVI lost resolution in the process, from 640x480 down to 528x480. If you had resized it for 4:3 encoding it would have been resized to 720x480 straightaway. That's why it's not a good idea to encode 1.33:1 sources for 16:9, although sometimes it can't be helped, such as when mixing 1.33:1 sources with widescreen sources in the same video. If the AVI has a lower resolution to begin with, then resizing for 16:9 might not lower the quality.

In case someone spots it, yes, I know I simplified the crop/resize/addborders.

[AndyCr15]

I need to do the reverse, take a 16:9 mpg and make it 4:3. I downloaded AviSynth... silly question, but how do you even run it? The only exe it installed was the uninstall.exe?

[mats.hogberg]

how do you even run it?

You don't. You write a .avs script (using Notepad, or some dedicated AVS editor, see Tools left) You then open the .avs script with your encoder (VirtualDub or HCEnc to give a few examples). AviSynt will then kick in, load your source video, apply the filters (like resizing in your particular case), and feed the result to the encoder.

/Mats

[manono]

When converting from 16:9 to 4:3, if the source is NTSC 720x480, then you resize to 720x368 and fill in the difference with black:

LanczosResize(720,368)
AddBorders(0,56,0,56)

You can easily use FitCD to make the scripts for you, when it gives you the crop/resize/addborders numbers. Here's FulciLives' guide to FitCD:

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic296341.html#1487285

Oh, I just noticed you're in London, and probably working in PAL. Then both the script just above and the one in the previous post have to be adjusted for PAL:

640x480 AVI to 16:9 PAL:

LanczosResize(528,576)
AddBorders(96,0,96,0)

16:9 to 4:3 for PAL:

LanczosResize(720,448)
AddBorders(0,64,0,64)