change from 4:4 to 19: aspect ratio

[taterg]

i have a mpg thats in 4:3 and i need to know how to get rid of the blank lines on top and bottom so it will play as a wide screen on a widescreen tv with out the black lines on top and botom

[SaSi]

How you do it depends on what tools you are using.

If you are using Tmpgenc, then you can crop the top and bottom black bars (with the crop options) and then select the encoding to fill the entire frame. This is the easy way that involves a single step.

However, Tmpgenc is not particularly good in this type of resizing - nor fast.

I would use VirtualDUB to crop the frame (use a null filter first) and then the resize filter to create the anamorphic picture. Use the highest quality setting to do this. Process the original video saving it with a fast and high quality codec (I would use hufyuv but DivX 5 is also good if used at highest quality), and then encode the produced anamorphic video with any MPEG encoder selecting a 16:9 aspect ratio.

In any case you are bound to see some aliasing in motions (especially low motion scenes).

I wouldn't do this unless I had a 16:9 TV.

[Nello_AU]

SaSi
I do not want to go off topic here but I am not sure about :

If you are using Tmpgenc, then you can crop the top and bottom black bars (with the crop options) and then select the encoding to fill the entire frame. This is the easy way that involves a single step.

I have a couple of AVI files that GSpot reports as:
640x272 (2.35:1) [=40:17]

When I use TMPGEnc and set the Aspect Ratio and Source aspect ratio to 16:9 display it still comes out on a widescreen display as 4:3 and you then have to zoom the display.

What do you have to do in TMPGEnc to get it to display properly on a 16:9 Display

[SaSi]

Nello_AU,

The initial question (as I understand it - taterg please confirm) was how to convert a hard-letterboxed movie, i.e. a widescreen movie that was encoded with black bars top/bottom, into an anamorphic one, i.e. a widescreen movie that fills the entire frame size.

Now, what you want to achieve is partly the opposite.

Your movie is not 16:9, as you calculated.

Assuming you want to author a DVD, then DVD can either play 4:3 or 16:9. The 2,35:1 aspect ratio cannot be handled by the DVD, so it needs to be letterboxed into a partially letterboxed 2,35:1 frame inside a 16:9 frame.

This is similar to letterboxing a 16:9 movie to make it 4:3, only the letterboxing is a bit less - the bars are not as wide.

I don't remember the exact numbers (width of bars) off my head but if you make a small drawing and do some simple calculations you will reach the numbers.

In this case you need to specify a 16:9 output, and not select full screen but select Center - custom size. Tmpgenc will allow you then to select the width and height.

What you put there depends on what type of media you are targeting. For DVD, you should put width = 720.

Height again is tricky, depends on the TV system. For PAL, DVD should have 576, for NTSC 480. In Australia (are you from there), I suppose you are using PAL.

So if you have reached that you need, say 30 pixels of letterboxing in each band, select a height of 516. Tmpgenc will center the frame vertically and add the letterbox