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  1. Hello, I'm a newbie, Half shadow. I need to ask you if there is a way to re-burn some DVD without reconvert the video MPEG files, that I recorded some years ago with an home DVD recorder from a television broadcast, but with the boring black boarders, 'cause was an old TV show in 4:3 but they did broadcast stretched in 16:9 and via scart cable recorded with the black boarders.

    Then there is a way to create a DVD structure that could use my original MP2 files stretching and cropping in real time the image when read form the DVD player? I can reburn the DVDs, but will be better do this without reencode the videos. Preferably with DVDstyler. Could be possible?
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  2. Member DB83's Avatar
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    If I read you correctly (and I am not sure if I do) you want to remove those borders and stretch the picture to fill the screen. Now many dvd players can display that 4:3 image to fill the screen but do you really want to do that and have everything looking fatter ? Many tvs can also do that.

    No player can crop an image in real time but all players have a zoom function so that will remove the borders but then you lose detail top and bottom of the picture. That will also happen if you take the original video and crop >> to get 16:9 video from 4:3 for PAL it is 72 lines top and bottom or you could vary it as long as the total number of lines are 144. And, yes, re-encoding that original recording will result in a loss of quality.
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  3. Unfortunately, Halfshadow has not provided enough information to understand clearly the problem. What and where are the "boring black borders" ? Are they horizontal bars on top and bottom of the movie, or vertical bars on the sizes, or even a black border all around the picture ? Also, how the TV plays it currently ? As a 4:4 or as a 16:9 DVD ? And finally, is the image distorted ?

    Not sure, but perhaps Halfshadow has a 16:9 movie originally recorded in a 4:3 image. The result is that, when played "normally" on a 16:9 TV, there are 4 black borders, all around the original picture. The movie looks very small in the center of the screen. The TV must zoom in the image to remove the borders, but it doesn't need to distort it.
    If it's the case, there is a flag in the IFO to tell the TV to automatically zoom in. Unfortunately, most TVs ignore that flag, but it is a good idea to set it anyway. You don't need to re-encode it, but you are lucky if that simple edit solves the problem.
    Open the DVD in PgcEdit, right-click the main movie in the left pane, and select "Domain Streams Attributes". The video format should already be 4:3. Just tick the "Source picture letterboxed" checkbox, and save the DVD.

    On the other hand, if the movie has simply been broadcast in 16:9 and recorded in 4:3, when it is played on a 16:9 TV, there are vertical black borders visible on the side of the image when playing it, and the picture looks distorted. It it's that case, it is very simple to fix the problem, again by editing the Domain Stream Attributes of the main movie. You should simply change the video format from 4:3 to 16:9 Automatic Letterbox.

    The third case is what DB83 suggests: a 4:3 movie has been broadcast in 16:9 with the necessary black borders to avoid the distortion. In that case, it is not possible to remove the black borders without re-encoding, and anyway, you should NEVER do that! (Except perhaps if you want to play that movie on an old 4:3 TV.) Who wants to see the world completely distorted ? You can forget the black borders, but it is impossible to like to see a beautiful girl horribly distorted and fat !
    r0lZ - PgcEdit homepage Hosted by VideoHelp (Thanks Baldrick)
    - BD3D2MK3D A tool to convert 3D BD to 3D SBS/T&B/FS MKV
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  4. Sorry if I didn't specified, the original TV show was in 4:3 but I recorded trough a sat decoder that stretched the image in 16:9 letterbox adding black borders in top and bottom 'cause the TV technicians transmitted it with the 16:9 flag that was wrong. The image isn't perfect in both 16:9 and 4:3 screens.

    The only thing I can do is cut the top and bottom with a 16:9 screen to fill all the screen, but the aspect ratio will not be however the original.

    And 4:3 screen don't have the function to cut the top and bottom black borders, that unfortunately are recorded like part of the video.

    I could also buy another DVD player with the function to cut automatically top and bottom part of the image also if is part of the video to fix this, 'cause mine personal DVD player started to works faulty.

    There isn't in alternative an IFO flag to force the zoom cutting only the letterbox borders? Will fix the issue for both screen types.
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  5. So, the movie was originally shot in 4:3 without black borders, and the MP2 stream of your DVD is in 4:3 but with the black borders and the image compressed vertically. Right?

    Unfortunately, I don't think that a solution exists without re-encoding. All players will (normally) assume that the aspect ratio of the movie is correct. And forcing the 16:9 flag in the IFO will compress the movie even more. You can perhaps hide the black borders, but that will not be sufficient to restore the correct aspect ratio. Sorry, but you have to re-encode.

    BTW, do you really want to rebuild a DVD ? If you can play a video file with your equipment, I strongly suggest to convert the MPEG-2 video to h264 or h265 and put it in a MKV container. The quality of the video will not be too degraded, you will regain much disc space, and you can easily do a backup. IMO, it's the best way to keep your library of movies in a safe place. The DVD format is dying, and DVD-R/RW are well know for their rapid degradation over time.
    r0lZ - PgcEdit homepage Hosted by VideoHelp (Thanks Baldrick)
    - BD3D2MK3D A tool to convert 3D BD to 3D SBS/T&B/FS MKV
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  6. Oh, ok, thank you for the explanation. I don't have a player able to play MKV format and I imagine that will be compatible only with HDMI output and I use always CRT screens, then I think that the only thing that I can do is convert them to AVI format cropping the borders and throw a hex to the technicians that transmitted it in letterbox. LOL
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