PAL XVid to NTSC DVD

[acruther]

I burned successfully and was able to author a DVD. The DVD looks pretty good, but it's a little smooshed using my DVD's widescreen setting. Using the 4:3 setting, it's letterboxed on all sides. Zooming works, but you lose alot of the resolution (it looks blurred).

I'm using a consumer Oppo 971H upscaling DVD player.

I know you guys have a version of SVCD2DVD that allows you to output the DVD in widescreen format (or even anamorphic?) I was wondering if I could get my greedy paws on that?

[ChrissyBoy]

If the avi aspect ratio lends itself to 16:9 the the dvd will be 16:9, UNLESS the duration is so long that the bitrate used to encode is less than 3000.... in which case a half-D1 DVD will be produced.

Can i see your log to deduce if this is happening?

[acruther]

Sorry I can't upload the log. This fourm says "no post mode specified." Oh how I love buggy software...

[ChrissyBoy]

Can't you just cut & paste?....

[acruther]

The only log I can find is 16k. The browser keeps locking up whenever I try to paste. Can you either tell me which part you need (first 10 lines, last 10 lines) or tell me what to look for?

[ChrissyBoy]

How about emailing it?

[acruther]

How about emailing it?

Sorry - it's 15 MB not 15k. It's too big to email as well. I would like to try the version where you can control the aspect ratio, though. Is this possible?

[ChrissyBoy]

Of course, not sure i know what you mean though (about controling the aspect ratio).

The log: Zip it up & email it & I will send you the latest build.

[acruther]

Of course, not sure i know what you mean though (about controling the aspect ratio).

The log: Zip it up & email it & I will send you the latest build.

It's 4.3 MB zipped - still to big to email...sigh...

[ChrissyBoy]

Upload it to ftp://ftp.svcd2dvdmpg.com:7676/ please.

[acruther]

Not trying to be obtuse, but I need a login and pswd.

[ChrissyBoy]

Apologies: ftp://Upload:SampleUploader@ftp.svcd2dvdmpg.com:7676/

[acruther]

I'm getting an error on the ftp server. Could be my firewall - who knows. Anyway, I used WinRar to compact the file and got it down to just over 2 MB. I was able to email that to you.

[ChrissyBoy]

ok. Thanks for that, got it. BUT it is the wrong log! Sorry that i was not too clear. The log i need is the one in the logs folder under the location where you installed SVCD2DVD.

[acruther]

Well that log is a much more manageable size... Sent.

[acruther]

Were you able to deduce anything from the log?

[ChrissyBoy]

Well the aspect ratio of the source is 1.25 which results in a 4:3 DVD (as far as my calculations go).

So i am guessing that the source has letterboxing on it to start with. Is this so?

[acruther]

I think so. When I run it in Windows Media Player, it is letterboxed on all sides. I've imported it into Adobe Premiere and it shows up as letterboxed above and below.

What does this mean?

[ChrissyBoy]

well the video itself (with the blackbars at the top & bottom) has a 4:3 aspect ratio but the viewable picture (minus blackbars) is more likley to be 16:9.

But as you are supplying the former and not the latter to SVCD2DVD it assumes that this is what you want to put on the DVD - black bars and all, whereas you don't. You want the viewable picture in widescreen.

It would be the same for any other encoder (unless there was an auto blackbar remover option)

So, you need to remove (crop) the black bars before you process with SVCD2DVD. (VirtualDub is probably the easiest way to do this: http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com/vdub-filters.htm). If you can't do it yourself then you can upload to my ftp & I'll do it for you. That said - premier may well do the job...

One thing to note here: I have never come across a letteroboxed avi before....

[acruther]

OK, so I'm cropping the avi in VirtualDub as you suggest. Man the file created by VirtualDub is ginormous. Anyway. the resolution after crop is 720x384. How will SVCD2DVD handle it when I run the PAL>NTSC conversion? Will it be widescreen?

[ChrissyBoy]

yes it will be 16:9. I assume you have an uncompressed avi there now - hence the size. Is there no option to compress with a codec? If not it doesn't matter as far as S2D is concerned.

Let me know how you get on.

[acruther]

Thanks for all the help. It came out pretty darn well. The final file size from VirtualDub was just over 100 GB. This compresses down to about 5 GB DVD (I used DL DVD). The original file in MPEG-4 was 700 MB.

Wow, compression is king!

[ChrissyBoy]

Good news. The key thing here is that most avi source files have no black bars.... if you find that you have one (i have never seen one yet!) then you need to crop before you convert to DVD...