Stretched video - how do I keep letterbox format?

[MacAttack]

I'm attempting to encode a video file into NTSC SVCD (480x480 MPEG-2) format. The source video is 576x240...when I play the source back full screen with Quicktime Player, the player maintains the "letterbox" format by placing black bars above and below the video. However, when I attempt to encode the video with either Cleaner or Astarte M.Pack, the video gets stretched vertically to fill up the whole screen with no black bars.

What settings can I mess with (in either application) to keep the video in letterbox format, so that the resultant encoded video includes the black bars on the top and bottom?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...thanks in advance!!

[MacAttack]

Can anyone help with this? I've got this video file that I'd really like to convert...please help!

[mikejr13]

When I have to maintain the aspect ratio I use quicktime pro. I place a 640x480 black jpeg image on one layer and the clip in front of it.

[MacAttack]

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On 2002-01-13 19:33:17, mikejr13 wrote:
When I have to maintain the aspect ratio I use quicktime pro. I place a 640x480 black jpeg image on one layer and the clip in front of it.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Thanks for the response...how exactly do I do that? Using the same principle, I tried pasting the video on top of a 576x576 black TIFF file (since I figured 576x576 would just scale to 480x480 better and the width would contain my entire video file), but I can't get the top and bottom bars to be black (they are gray).

A few questions I guess...

1) Should I even use 576x576, or should I use 576x432 (640x480 scaled down to my video file's width)? I'm just afraid that by using 640x480 exactly, there will be borders along the left and right sides of the video.
2) What is the exact procedure for layering the black still frame file and the video (in this case, a DivX file)?
3) Also, how does one center the video file onto the black image? QT Pro seems to default the video to the top.

Thanks again!


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MacAttack on 2002-01-14 19:44:36 ]</font>

[Circus-Szalewski]

(There's a smily showing up in this post. I've tried to edit it, but it persists. Don't hold it against me, please.)

As always, QT Pro is easy to use; finding the documentation is the diffficulty.
There are two ways to do this. Each equally simple. The one here is more efficient with filesize (only 3 bytes!) but the second is only a whopping 11K.

I'm going to assume you're using a mac.
1) To create the black frame, simply create a title with no words which will run under all other tracks the length of your movie. Copy/Paste the following code into any standard ASCII plain text editor such as SimpleText:

{QTtext}{fontand}{plain}{size:50}{textColor: 0, 0, 0}{backColor: 0, 0, 0} {justify:center}{timeScale:30}{width:576}{height:5 76}{timeStamps:absolute}{language:0}{textEncoding: 0}[00:00:00.00]

[04:04:00.00]

That's the end of the code.
You need to manually key a return after the [00:00:00.00] time code and again after the endtime code.

2) Go back in and adjust the following values according to your needs:
{timeScale:30} For NTSC, 30 should be what you need.
{width:576} I believe you said 576pixels was the width of your source.
{height:576} I believe you said 576 pixels was the target height of the finished product.
[04:04:00.00] Ending time code. [hh:mms:ff]

Save as BlackFrame.txt or whatever you want to name it and close this document making note of where you saved it.

3) In QT Pro, File>Import BlackFrame.txt. QT opens a player with an all black image which is the same time length as your source and the desired size of your finished product. Keep this player on your desk.

4) If QT 5, press code+J (ie, press and hold the apple-key -- below the "X" on your keyboard -- while pressing "J"). This will open the Properties window for BlackFrame, the movie. (If you are using a QT version lower than 5, press code+I to achieve the same thing). You'll see pop-ups displaying "Movie" on the left and "Annotations" of the right.

5) Scroll through the selections under "Movie" to "Text Track". Scroll through the selections under "Annotations" to "General". Click "Change Name" and, in Change Track Name window, enter "Black Frame" or whatever you want the reference name to be. You could have left it "Text Track", but by the time you add other video tracks to this movie, it's going to get cluttered. Click "OK".

6) Open your QT version of the source material you wish to letterbox in a second player. Code+A to select the entire timeline. Code+C to copy it.

7) Select BlackFrame, the movie. Make sure the time is at zero. Option(alt)+code+V to add (instead of paste into). Save, allowing dependencies. Close the source copy.

8) Back in BlackFrame.txt Properties, left pop-up, scroll down to "Black Frame". In the right pop-up, scroll down to "Layer". Click the up or down arrow to position BlackFrame's level (front to back) in relation to other visual tracks (of sourcemovie). Interestingly enough, you *may* be able to get away with having all video tracks on the same layer.

9) Now, let's position the source movie frame midway from top to bottom. In the left pop-up, scroll to "Video Track", in the right pop up, scroll down to "Size". (If you find several video tracks, you'll eventually need to move them all, one at time. To determine which is which, select the player, and go to the toolbar Edit>enable tracks. Toggle these on or off to learn what each track is named and rename it something convenient as we already renamed "Text Track" to "Black Frame"). Click "Adjust" and QT will put red frame-adjustors around the frame of sourcemovie in your player. Click/Drag the frame to the desired position taking care not to move it from side to side. You can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move sourcemovie but this is sloooooooow. When you've got sourcemovie into the desired place, click "Done". Scroll left pop-up to "Movie" and glance at the dimensions to the right of "Current" to check whether you've strayed and stretched the overall frame size.

10) Now you can save BlackFrame as a self-contained movie with the name you really want it to have.

All of these steps can be "undone" ad infinitum by disabling, deleting, or moving a track. Piece of cake, huh?

The other method is to copy a single black frame which, instead of being pasted into the sourcemovie (or a work copy of it) is "Add-Scaled". You then play with the layers and framing as described above.
The Add-Scaled maneuver is achieved by copying the blackframe, code+A selecting all of the sourcemovie, then Shift+option(alt)+Code+V to scale the single frame the whole time length of the source and stretching the frame of the player.

If you decide that sourcemovie has bad top or bottom edges (like a tracking problem) which is still evident, you can use a reverse variation of this same technique to create two black bands. These will, of course, be masking the offending frame edge instead of using source movie to "mask" BlackFrame. Make sense? I thought not. Just play around, it's the easiest way to learn.

I know this was lengthy. Hope it proves helpful to you and others who may run across it.