xmedia Recode how to remove black borders using Crop?? does not work

[pectin232]

Using XMedia Recode I have converted avi files to x264 mp4 format. Quality is nice but size is much larger than using xvid4psp. I tried using the crop feature in xmedia recode but somehow that feature does not work. Anyone got that crop feature working?

[Baldrick]

SHouldn't you just resize to a lower frame size?
Does the crop preview look okey?

[guns1inger]

It is a two part process. Crop first, then go back to the Resolution parameters and manually adjust the aspect ratio. It is not an intuitive way of working (especially when Xvid4PSP's auto-cropping works so well) and takes some getting used to. I have gone back to Xvid4PSP for DVD source material simply because it is faster to work there than with Xmedia Recode. However Xmedia does work with some formats that Xvid4PSP craps out on.

Swings and roundabouts.

[pectin232]

problem is I cannot see or preview how the cropping is ... the way it works is so strange.,... I am probably just not used to it. Problem is when I put like say 100 for top and 100 for bottom [ as an example]... it just basically expands it and the black border is still there... which I believe is making the file size huge... I am reencoding a 1280 x 720 to a little smaller aspect ratio and putting subtitles on it

[guns1inger]

Under the Resolution tab, change Aspect Ratio to custom, then set the aspect ration you want. You will probably introduce an Aspect Ratio error at this point. Ignore it for the moment.

Go to the Crop tab and do your cropping. Check back on the Resolution tab to see if the error is either gone, or down to an acceptable level (i.e. as close to 0 as possible). Crop and check until you have everything right.

Note : The black bars have nothing to do with file size. File size is purely a function of Bitrate X Running Time. Lower bitrate, smaller file size. Larger bitrate, bigger files. Black bars require very little bitrate to encode.

[pectin232]

I tried to encode video and have an SRT file with same name but after encoding the subtitles was not hard coded? Is there a way for Xmedia Recode to accept subtitles or what formats? idx? obviously srt does not work.