Downgrade 1080p to 720p and change the aspect from 4:3 to 16:9

[Gerff]

I want to downgrade a few videos from 1080p to 720p, but the thing is the original files have a 4:3 aspect and I also want to change it to 16:9 without stretching out the video. Is there a program I can use to do both or do I have to do it in separated steps?

Basically what I'm trying to do is this:



(sorry if the images are too big, I don't know how to resize it here)

[Cornucopia]

What you've shown above is something that is 1:1 PAR in both before+after shots, and is cropped. Did you want to crop? You do understand that unless you have some facility for doing pan&scan (such as an advanced/intermediate NLE, or a Compositing/Animation app), you would likely encounter points in the program where your static crop could cut out something important.

Unless you meant you wanted to pillarbox, or stretch.

Possibility: 1440x1080, using a 4:3 PAR = 16:9 DAR, just like 1280x720 (at 1:1 PAR) is. So you may not need to change the DAR, just resize down, if your footage was originally meant to be of that type. But that could be a red herring.

Scott

[hello_hello]

I've done a similar thing before, although never with animation so I don't know how much the cropping would need to vary. The last movie I did was an old one from the 50's. It was so easy to do (the same cropping for the entire move) I looked it up, and apparently it was originally released in cinemas in both a 1.37 and a 1.75 aspect ratio, so I assume it was filmed with that in mind. I still had to crop the beginning and end credits differently though.

I've done others where the cropping changed almost from scene to scene. One scene all the action would be near the top of the frame, the next down near the bottom, the next in the middle etc. You can spend forever trying to do proper pan and scan cropping if that's the case.
Almost any encoding program will crop. If it doesn't have an aspect ratio calculator you can use a separate one to get it right. Just set the output dimensions to something 16:9 (ie 704x396) and adjust the cropping until the aspect ratio distortion is as close to zero as you can get it. That'd be the cropping you'd use with any 16:9 dimensions (704x396, 1280x720 etc). YodaResizeCalculator (it's an exe, but it's safe).

I do it with MeGUI and Avisynth, but you'd need to learn a little about using Avisynth in order to do it. Avisynth doesn't force you to use the same cropping throughout. Many conversion programs do.
I have my PC hooked up to my TV, so mostly, I just do it on playback. MPC-HC lets you zoom and also move the picture up and down or sideways etc so you can quite often place all the action in the middle of the screen that way and you're still not stretching it. Every now and then someone's head might get cut off a little, or a close-up looks just a little too close-up etc, but much of the time I can watch 4:3 video that way and quickly forget it's 4:3. My TV has a zoom function but it seems to also stretch the picture a bit which I don't like.

[hello_hello]

The calculator only shows 2 digits, but for your example 136 pixels from the top and 134 from the bottom would do it. Or any top and bottom cropping combination which removes a total of 270 pixels. You could crop 100 from the top and 170 from the bottom etc.


[Attachment 27740 - Click to enlarge]

[johns0]

The one thing you will find bad about cropping this is that any needed scenes such as bottom dialogue or showing important commands will be cut out.

[jagabo]

Why don't you just resize to 960x720 so you can keep the whole picture?

[pandy]

Also You can give a chance to nonlinear scaling http://forum.inmatrix.com/index.php?showtopic=10403#entry40790

[jagabo]

That type of non-linear scaling looks ok when all the action is at the center of the frame. But during panning shots, or when an object moves from the edges of the frame to the center, it looks terrible.

[pandy]

That type of non-linear scaling looks ok when all the action is at the center of the frame. But during panning shots, or when an object moves from the edges of the frame to the center, it looks terrible.

Yep, especially with animation this can be problem but... it looks sometimes so weird that it is even hilarious - side to this perhaps some hybrid approach - partial nonlinear plus in paint plus "ambilight Philips"like effect.