DVD - 4:3 with borders

[THRobinson]

Was looking at some AI upscaled files today and they were formatted with large black borders on the left/right side to make them 16:9, but everything looks... squished.

I used Handbrake (Vidcoder actually, same thing, different GUI) and cropped the sides and it was 938x720... not 960x720. I cropped and reconded to force it to 960x720 and looks better.

Posted a mention of that, and response was "DVD has 8px black borders on each side. Do the math."... I did the math and still 6px off, but not the point.

Question is, is that correct? and on a 4:3 TV, didn't the DVD player strech it out to remove the 8px on either side to make the image 4:3?

Personally, I know 22px isn't too far off, but it was definitely noticeable to me.

[Sharc]

.... and on a 4:3 TV, didn't the DVD player strech it out to remove the 8px on either side to make the image 4:3?

720x576 (PAL) or 720x480 (NTSC) captures of analog sources (like VHS tapes) have black side borders of ~8 pixels each side if captured according to the Rec.601 standard. The 4:3 picture is located within a ~704x576 (480) rectangle. Legacy DVD players with analog (SCART) connection to the TV usually stretched the picture such that the inner 704x576 (480) rectangle was correctly displayed as 4:3 on TV.
Todays DVD/Blu-ray players with digital connection to the TV (HDMI) usually include the ~8px sidebars in the picture, so the active picture gets slightly squeezed (~2%). To eliminate this slight distortion one has to crop the sidebars and encode the remaining ~704x576 (480) as 4:3.

For native digital DVDs usually the full 720x576 (480) frame is 4:3 (or 16:9 for widescreen).

4:3 footage put into a 16:9 canvas (frame) is a totally different subject of course.

[THRobinson]

So... cropping the black bars off the sides and stretching to 4:3 was right then... I didn't know about the ~8px side bars, but I know when something looks squished.