conversion help

[dg_phillips]

Unsure of the correct terminology here...in fact I wish there was a guide that could help me but I can't seem to find it.

I have an mpeg1 that is VERY wide screen...in fact, viewing it on PowerDVD to me looks like trying to view a movie on a ribbon...ie the top third and the bottom third of the viewing area are black. I believe this black region is called the letterbox...correct me if I'm wrong. What I would like to accomplish is removing the black area on top and bottom and resize the video to play on my standard television. I think this can be done with VirtualDub frameserved to TMPGEnc but without explicit instructions, I can't get this to work. Can anyone help??? Also, am I trying to CROP or not?

dg_phillips

[Vejita-sama]

Q: What's the resolution of the source MPEG1 file?

Q: Are the black bars part of the MPEG, or is powerDVD adding them when it plays the file?

Here's the thing. TVs have a DAR (display aspect ratio) of 4:3 and PC's have a DAR of 1:1. So you can't really tell what the source will look like on the TV.

You can cut out the black bars at the top and bottom, but if you want to preserve the DAR you'll have to cut stuff off the right/left too (other wise everything will be strecthed out).

Need a little more info.

[ZippyP.]

It sounds like you want to change wide screen display (16x9) to full screen (4x3).

There's a couple of ways to do it:

1. Chop of the sides of the picture to make it 4x3 and lose 1/4 of the picture.

2. Squish it all in and make everything tall and skinny.

Neither is very satisfactory, it's probably best to live with it.