Letterbox and Gutterbox

[ydayna]

Hi. I'm using the Dazzle HD capture device. But, I"m having problems. I'm capturing in 4:3 ratio from a vcr. The picture is either letterboxed or gutterboxed. How do I correct that to take the boxing away and make it full screen?

Thanks

[Tom Saurus]

ydayna: Are you capturing with the mpeg2 codec or an h.264 codec? Are you intending on making a DVD with menus and such? Are you intending on just having these captures as individual files that stand alone and you watch on a data disc? So the original video is a full screen video? There are ways to deal with that but it helps if you spell out exactly what you want your end product to be.

[Krispy Kritter]

How is the source formatted? VCR content isn't all "4:3". There were numerous movie releases that were "widescreen" and had bars top and bottom. That material will need to cropped. And for commercial material, you are better off get a new copy, unless it's something that hasn't been released on DVD. As the quality is still the equivalent of VHS or lower.

[ydayna]

I want to capture AVI. I tried both AVI and MPEG 2, but get the same box picture. I'm rendering to a DVD. No menus. Yes, the original recording is full screen.

I'm working with old vhs tapes of home movies from the 70's and 80's. Just want to edit out the glitches and lay a music track.

[manono]

I'm capturing in 4:3 ratio from a vcr. The picture is either letterboxed or gutterboxed. How do I correct that to take the boxing away and make it full screen?

First, saying 'correct that' implies something's wrong. All VHS tapes have a 4:3 DAR and if the content is widescreen you get letterboxing. That's just how it is. If you want to make it 16:9 then you crop and resize before encoding for DVD. But the final result probably won't be any better than encoding it for 4:3 and using the zoom on your remote control. There's just not enough resolution in those VHS tapes. If you provide a short sample we can explain how to crop and resize to encode as a 16:9 DVD.

[usually_quiet]

To add to what manono said, DVD is always 16:9 (widescreen) or 4:3 (fullscreen) aspect ratio. If the picture area has a different aspect ratio, black bars are usually added to make up the difference so that all of the picture area is retained. If the actual picture area in your captures turns out to be something other than 16:9 or 4:3, you will need to crop away part of the picture to completely eliminate letter boxing and/or pillar boxing and produce a picture with either a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio.