Resize xvids to fit a widescreen TV

[DrSteve]

Hello. This is my first post on the forum so please be gentle.

I have been looking in the guides and searching the forum but have just managed to get myself confused about what I'm trying to do so I wonder if anyone could help me out.

I have a collection of cartoons that my son watches on our widescreen plasma. These are on a portable HDD that's connected to an Xbox360 and played over a VGA connection to the TV.

Some of them look fine and fill the screen - these are 640x352 which I calculate to be 1.81:1 and therefore widescreen. The rest are 640x480 so 4:3 and are displayed with the black bars down the sides. Unfoutunately since the xbox is connected by VGA I can't change the wide/zoom/stretch options of the TV. The xbox outputs the signal at the same resolution as the TV so I assume it's the xbox that's adding the bars.

What's the best way to convert the xvids to a widescreen resolution?

Any help appreciated.

Steve.

[Baldrick]

How does the 640x480 look on your computer? any black bars?

[DrSteve]

Yep. Still has the black bars when it's on fullscreen on the laptop (set at 1280x800).

[guns1inger]

The only thing you can do is crop off some of the picture and re-encode, or live with the fact that these are 4:3 images, you have a 16:9 TV, and vertical black bars are required to keep the image looking correct.

I don't get your problem.

[manono]

So, when watching regular 1.33:1 TV programs, you use the remote control to stretch the shows so they fill the screen, thus making everyone look short and fat? And you're complaining that you can't do this with AVIs - that the X-Box/TV set combo doesn't let you ruin the aspect ratios of your AVIs?

Are you really a doctor, meaning you're supposed to have a reasonable amount of intelligence and common sense?

There are 2 ways to do what you want, both involving reencoding. One is a simple resize to 624x352 which also makes everyone look short and fat. The other involves cropping from the top and bottom and a resize to your TV set's dimensions (624x352 or similar). You want to crop enough so that the remaining Width:Height ratio is roughly 1.78:1. This lops off from the top and bottom and you may find missing heads and legs as a result, but it does keep the aspect ratio. Both can be most easily done in VirtualDub(Mod), I guess.

[AlanHK]

So, when watching regular 1.33:1 TV programs, you use the remote control to stretch the shows so they fill the screen, thus making everyone look short and fat?

A lot of people with widescreen TVs seem to prefer distorted images that fill the screen to realistic ratios with "ugly black bars". If you really want to do that, there is usually a settng in the DVD player to force widescreen. Or just zoom the picture in and get the expanded/cropped effect.

[jagabo]

Does MPC run on the Xbox 360? If so, just set the Video Frame-> "Touch window from outside" option.

[FulciLives]

First we had to fight "letterbox" or "widescreen" on regular televisions and explain why movies had to have black on the top and bottom.

Now we have to fight "pillarbox" where a 1.33:1 Full Screen video has black on either side when viewing on a 16x9 WS TV.

Why can't people "get" the simplest of things?

- John "FulciLives" Coleman