Converting from widescreen to 320 x 240 — how?

[Timmilne]

Please forgive what must be total ignorance of the technicalities of video on here, but I'd like to convert widescreen format (1280 x 720) to a narrow format — 320x240

I've downloaded Handbrake but not entirely sure how to do (it's in cropping, but how much?)

But, is there a way of adding the black bars top and bottom (letter boxing?) or is there another programme better suited to complete beginners?

Many thanks in advance

[LMotlow]

Ignorance aside, use your common sense and notice this: 1280x720 is 16:9. 320x240 is 4:3. We assume you at least know what an aspect ratio is.

Why 320x240?

[Timmilne]

Because that's the ratio of the screen I'm playing it on — it's a small (2.5") TFT screen

I don't want to either squish the film by reducing the width nor lose half the content (some of it includes full-frame graphics) by cropping it. So, I want keep the full width and pad out the height with black bars.

I get the feeling that black bars are so undesirable that nobody ever wants to add them, but how else do you keep everything that's within the frame without turning stretching everything in it?

[jagabo]

Resize to 320x180 (320 * 9 / 16 = 180). Encode square pixel. The player should automatically add top and bottom letterbox bars. If the player doesn't automatically do that you have to add them before encoding. I don't know if Handbrake can do that.

[aedipuss]

vidcoder is a decent gui for handbrake. makes some setup easier.