Add borders to make video 4:3

[Marcio.ciconne]

How can I add horizontal borders to the video so that it is in 4:3 format? I have a video that originally contains stripes on the right and left sides, but it was stretched to 16:9, I want to return it to 4:3 by adding the stripes, what script do I use in Avisynth to do this?

[jagabo]

Spline36Resize(height*4/3, height) # resize to 4:3
AddBorders(height*2/9, 0, height*2/9, 0) # add borders to create a 16:9 frame

In practice, with YUV 4:2:0 video, you need to force mod 2.

[Marcio.ciconne]

Spline36Resize(height*4/3, height) # resize to 4:3
AddBorders(height*2/9, 0, height*2/9, 0) # add borders to create a 16:9 frame

In practice, with YUV 4:2:0 video, you need to force mod 2.

Great, and how do I make the track a little more open? I want to add the track but not make it as closed as 4:3

[Alwyn]

IMO, these days you shouldn't be adding any borders. Every TV I've used will faithfully display a 4:3 video without stretching it, as will any decent computer media player eg VLC.

What adding hard borders does do is mess up how the video is displayed on a portrait screen when it is held upright eg phone (compressed video area), and worse, on a 4:3 screen such as a ipad, even when held in landscape, the actual video frame will not display across the full screen. Ipad example:


[Attachment 87266 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 87267 - Click to enlarge]

Youtube videos should also not have burned-in bars, as they look positively ugly IMO.

[Alwyn]

This Videohelp post shows what happens when borders are hard-coded into a video.

[ProWo]

No need to add borders, you can simply change the aspect ratio to 4:3, without re-encoding.
You can do this with clever Ffmpeg-GUI.