Widescreen video rip - small vertical black bars each side??

[smallfry]

Recently, while trying to back up a 16:9 or widescreen (I still don't know if there is a difference) DVD movie, I ripped the main video/audio. When I played it back on the PC to test it, the video had the normal horizontal black bars above and below; however, it also had smaller vertical black bars on left and right sides.

Please, Can anyone tell me why these vertical black bars are present???
I didn't alter the video; I merely ripped to the hard drive and played back.

Thanks.

[poopyhead]

16:9 doesn't necessarily mean widescreen, because there are non-anamorphic widescreen that have aspect ratio of 4:3.

watching ripped vobs directly from your PC may have some distortions. that's to be expected. there is nothing wrong. you need to burn it to a DVD-R or encode it to (S)VCD before the video will be like the original.

[Gurm]

16:9 on the back of a DVD means (usually) that the DVD is using anamorphic video... in other words, it has extra lines of vertical resolution that normal players ignore. Think of it this way - a 16x9 TV has the SAME vertical resolution as your TV, but MORE horizontal resolution. Instead of being letterboxed so it'll all fit, it displays a movie at full size.

So, instead of using, say, 60% of the vertical space on your screen, a 16:9 tv uses 100%. Anamorphic 16:9 DVD's have extra lines of vertical resolution so that the picture doesn't look all dithered on nice widescreen TV's.

"Widescreen" just means that it's presented in letterbox format.

- Gurm