Convert letterbox to fullscreen for menu

[wallmg]

Experimenting with creating motion menus using DVD-Lab and Pinnacle 8.xx.

Using Pinnacle, I first edit and combine a few clips from movie captured off TV with ATI 9000 Pro card. I save that edited clip as MPEG2 file and import into DVD-Lab. Problem is, the movie is letterbox format, which is not desirable for the motion menu.

I can't find anywhere in Pinnacle, or in its manual, where you can convert letterbox to 4:3 fullscreen. The only way I've found around this is to import the menu clip into TMPGEnc Source Creator and use the crop feature, spreading the picture out until the black is gone. This creates a few artifacts, however and seems a bit "unsophisticated."

Is there a better way to do this? Thanks.

[johns0]

Why dont you encode the clip at 4:3 and add borders instead of going full screen?

[wallmg]

What do you mean by "add borders." Are you talking about adding a frame in DVD-Lab? I am doing that, but with a letterbox clip, you still see the black strips at top and bottom. I want to just see the movie clip with no black bars for the motion menu.

[johns0]

Borders are the black stripes,you`ll get artifacts when going to full screen anyways from letterbox,try raising the bitrate for the fullscreen encode,might help.