Movie maker shrank my video

[kodec]

Hi guys, I have used Movie Maker to convert a Huffyuv interlaced letterboxed (black bars) 960x720 file to a progressive letterboxed MP4 960x720 but the actuall video footage inside letterbox has symetrically shrunk after the conversion! Now I have the 960x720 file with actual video footage smaller! What went wrong, what can I do?

[DB83]

It may be easier to understand you (I do not at present) if you were to post a cap of both the original and converted clip.

Chances are that you have used the wrong tool. Maybe the progressive has halved the height of the video (as it can). Do you really want letterboxing in the conversion ?

[kodec]

Here, almost the same motion scene; first pic the original interlaced capture then the converted. It is obvious that Movie Maker not only halved the actual video area inside the lettebox but also didn't deinterlace it properly at all regardless of what it now says in the file info that the video is progressive. Now I'm deinterlacing the original in Vdub first, area based, and then will try again with Movie maker to see if it's going to leave it intact. Oh, btw I'm needenig the letterbox and 720p in order to later maintain 192 kbps audio inside the video on YouTube, the video originally is a VHS capture.

[DB83]

You still talk in riddles. What does letterboxing to do with audio ? Answer = NOTHING.

Upload a short video sample of the original - virtual dub stream copy should handle that (you might need to change the video compression tho)

And 960*720 is an odd AR. Seems that someone took a 4:3 video in a 16:9 pillarbox and then threw that into a 720i frame.

[kodec]

Yes, never mind, thanks.

[manono]

first pic the original interlaced capture then the converted.

You shouldn't have capped at 720 as you ruined the field structure, thus making it impossible to deinterlace. Cap at 720x480 or 576 height (depending on if NTSC or PAL), followed by deinterlacing and then upsizing to 720p.

Oh, btw I'm needenig the letterbox in order to later maintain 192 kbps audio inside the video on YouTube,

Maybe YouTube gives 192 kbps audio for 720p uploads, but you don't need the letterbox. You could just upload a 960x720 video without the black bars. Adding the black bars purposely just makes you look incompetent.

And Movie Maker is probably the absolute worst program to use for what you want.

[kodec]

Yes, it gives 192 and that's the key to all this. Well I capped at 768x576, then set the crop to remove the noise at all 4 borders and then properly set the overscan mask to get perfect 4:3 with 960x720, all using the resize filter. I might have messed up the interlacing by not selecting multiplies of 2 while cropping each four offsets. I thought about the upsizing but didn't like the idea in the end cause I wanted to stay as close as possible to the cropped size without cropping more than needed to get the multiplies for perfect 4:3 and went for the letterbox instead. I will try it now with proper multiplies too. Thanks manono and just tell me in that chain you mentioned, which deinterlacing filter to use, for upsize I guess internal resize filter bicubic or lanczos, I read all kind of opinions, never done upsizing before, thanks.

Ah, yes, I used Movie Maker bc I only used it for songs with still image b4 and it was good for that

[manono]

Ah, you cropped before deinterlacing. Deinterlace first, and then crop.

Which deinterlacer to use? Nothing from VDub. I would use QTGMC in AviSynth, and VDub doesn't have it. But unless you want the very best quality, what you did should be okay. And rather than cropping away the stuff at the bottom and/or sides, you might be better off by just covering it up in black. That way you keep the aspect ratio correct.

Well I capped at 768x576, then set the crop to remove the noise at all 4 borders and then properly set the overscan mask to get perfect 4:3 with 960x720

I'm not so sure about that but without a sample to check, there's no way to know for sure about your 'perfect 4:3'.

[DB83]

The other way to remove the 'rubbish' left by the capture(head noise etc.) is to add a small border. Then the frame size is left alone.

Huffyuv captures 'square' so the correct AR should have been 720*576 and resize from there. Yes, 768*576 is 4:3 but not from a VHS source. AFAIK

The concept of your borders all around is totally wrong.

[kodec]

Thanks manono and captain, I've taken into account your suggestions. Now that I'm done deinterlacing, tell me just one thing, how would youd sort in chain these filters for my VHS cap: resize / sharpen / saturation? I thought of that order.

EDIT: Well I did that way and it's all ok now, looking decent, was using Handbrake in the end. There is one other problem with YouTube now but I asked about it in the other forum section.