16:9 VCD'S

[EnNiS]

I have a avi dvd rip and it is in full or kind fullish screen
i set it as 4:3 and it has little black lines at the top and botton but i want it widescreen so i have to make it 16:9
is this compatible with dvd players and will it look fine and will it play fine etc..
thanx

[Vejita-sama]

Say what?!?

You source is a DiVX I assume. You say the it's 'kind of full screen' what does that mean? Does the DivX contain letterboxing (black bars) as part of the video stream?

A proper DivX file has a DAR of 1:1 (that's the only DAR for PCs). But what's the DAR of the source DVD (if it's a movie than I suspect 16:9) but is that 1.85:1 or 2.35:1? What's the resolution of the DivX file?

You encoded a MPEG1 (I assume in TMPGenc and I'll also assume as full screen keep aspect ratio). And that came out letterboxed (black bars at top and bottom). Which sounds like what you want. But then you say you want it widescreen? What do you mean by 'widescreen.' Do you mean can you make an apomorphic VCD? If so you can't. VCDs/SVCDs have a DAR of 4:3 only. If you want to preserve the original DAR you have to letter box the encode (ie. make the black bars part of the encoded MPEG).

I'm not sure if this info/history helps or just confuses you more But if you can give us the resolution of the DivX, the source (DVD) DAR, and what you want your final MPEG to look like (and do) that'll help.

[EnNiS]

well that didnt really make sense
wats a DAR
but here the info: 608 x 400
29.970
and it is fullscreen

i want to make it wide screen (black bars at the top, rather than fullscreen) so what ever
thanx

[Vejita-sama]

DAR = display aspect ratio. Take a look at:

http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/aspectratios/widescreenorama.html

These two guides should explain it. Basically there are 3 DARs that you're likely to see: 4:3 (TV, VCD, SVCD). 1:1 (PC) (16:9 film and widescreen TVs). 16:9 films come in two verisons "academy flat" = 1.85:1 and anamorphic scope = 2.35:1.

In your case 608x400 has a DAR of 1.52:1, which really isn't anything. But that's not a huge surprise because a lot of DivX/Xvid files are very poorly encoded.

Now you say you want to make it widescrenn ('black bars at the top) I assume you mean letterboxed, that is black bars at the top and bottom. You didn't say which programs/settings you are using. But for TMPGenc just choose 'full screen keep aspect ratio' under [settings | advance] and it'll do it for you.

These black bars will be encoded as part of the MPEG. The resulting x(S)VCD will be 4:3, because x(S)VCDs can only be 4:3. But the video will retain it's original DAR (because of the full screen keep aspect ratio). TMPGenc will add black bars as necessary to do so.

Viewed on a standard TV the picture will look fine.

[DJRumpy]

Your video is closer to 4:3 video (1.33), rather than 1.85:1. You can use AVISynth to crop your video, or VirtualDub.

What you will do, is a poor mans widescreen. You will be taking the center of your video, from far left to far right, leaving the top and bottom of the video out.

The AVISynth command will look like this:

avisource("c:\folder\yourmovie.avi") #your video source
Crop(0,36,608,328) # crops the middle to a 1.85:1 aspect ratio
BicubicResize(352,190) #resized to 1.85 vcd without letterbox
AddBorders(0,25,0,25) # adds letterboxing to vcd standard res

The above script gives you a 1.85:1 VCD with a 4:3 aspect ratio (letterboxed).

The VCD will not be an xVCD as it's completely within spec.

[energy80s]

Don't bother with AVISynth, TMPG will do this using the "Crop" function, and you'll be able to see instantly just how your picture will look. I'm not sure just how many lines top and bottom DJ Rumpy is cropping (come on Rumpy, tell us! ) but just use the same amount in TMPG. For PAL 720x576 I crop the top and bottom 74 lines and just replace these with black bars (TMPG will do this automatically) and this gives you a 16x9 letterboxed image in a 4:3 frame. NTSC will be different.

[DJRumpy]

You can use simple division to get the correct number of lines.

avisource("c:\folder\yourmovie.avi") #your video source
Crop(0,36,608,328) # crops the middle to a 1.85:1 aspect ratio
BicubicResize(352,190) #resized to 1.85 vcd without letterbox
AddBorders(0,25,0,25) # adds letterboxing to vcd standard res

Cropping 36 lines from the top, and bottom (72 total), gives you a 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

You can get this by dividing 608 (your horz resolution), by 1.85:
608/1.85=328
Subtract 328 (your new Vertical resolution, from the existing resolution)
400-328=72
This gives you the amount to crop to get the correct aspect ratio. Now all you have to do is divide by two to take a little off the top, and a little off the bottom
72/2=36

It looks worse than at reads. It makes sense when you work through it.

To figure the VCD resolution, just do the same math. Divide the horizontal by your target aspect ratio:
352/1.85=190
This gives us our VCD vertical resolution. Fill in the rest with letterboxing to bring it to the full VCD resolution of 352x240
240-190=50

50 / 2 = 25

So our VCD letterbox borders will be 25 on top..25 on bottom...

Clear as mud?

[energy80s]

Right, so just load your file into TMPG go into the crop feature (in advanced properties) and crop the top and bottom 25 lines and replace them with black bars. Set the input DAR to 1:1 and the output DAR to Centre (keep aspect ratio) and make sure that the output file size (in the first TMPG porperties pane) is at 352x240. This should give you a reasonable letterboxed image with the correct aspect ratio.