Visual cropping with Gordian Knot?

[Lester Burnham]

I've just tried using both AutoGK and Gordian Knot.

I quite like the tweakability with Godian Knot, over AutoGK, and I was having issues with audio sync when just converting from NTSC DVDs (to AVI / DivX or Xvid).

I have a question regarding Gordian Knot - is there an interactive, graphical ability to crop the black borders from video?

The auto settings left a uniform, albeit quite narrow black border around the complete image (it is quite narrow, but would like it gone) when set to auto crop, whereas AutoGK slightly overcropped the source video by actually removing a slight bit of the picture.

Other conversion utilities allow you to move the cropping areas so that you can get it almost pixel perfect - is that possible with Gordian Knot and I'm just not seeing it?

Also, given that I'm only converting from my own DVDs (to play on a PMP - Archos AV440), and most of the source DVDs are region 2, PAL, but some are region 1 / NTSC - is force film the best option in dgindex (assuming pretty high scores for film)?

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

[manono]

Hi-

Use the Pixel Crop instead of the AutoCrop. That way you can manually crop and get it just right. Keep an eye on the Aspect Error, though.

...is force film the best option in dgindex (assuming pretty high scores for film)?

Usually, but not always. The conventional wisdom says that with a FILM percentage of greater than 95% it's safe to use ForceFILM. However, unless the FILM is 100%, you are by no means guaranteed not to get any residual interlacing. But at Archos type resolutions, I doubt you'd see it anyway.

By the way, you can also crop more to your liking with AutoGK by accessing the hidden options and filling in the crop values. It's explained in the included tutorial.

[Lester Burnham]

Hi-

Use the Pixel Crop instead of the AutoCrop. That way you can manually crop and get it just right. Keep an eye on the Aspect Error, though.

...is force film the best option in dgindex (assuming pretty high scores for film)?

Usually, but not always. The conventional wisdom says that with a FILM percentage of greater than 95% it's safe to use ForceFILM. However, unless the FILM is 100%, you are by no means guaranteed not to get any residual interlacing. But at Archos type resolutions, I doubt you'd see it anyway.

By the way, you can also crop more to your liking with AutoGK by accessing the hidden options and filling in the crop values. It's explained in the included tutorial.

Many thanks for your advice - it is appreciated.

Using the pixel crop in GK - is that like you could do say in virtualdub cropping, where you see grey bars covering up the extra black bits? Or do you just have to get the pixel values right and observe the results?

[manono]

Hi-

Using the pixel crop in GK - is that like you could do say in virtualdub cropping, where you see grey bars covering up the extra black bits?

It's a little bit different. When you open the D2V from DGIndex in GKnot, you'll see the DVD video, black bars and all. As you increase the crop numbers using the Pixel Crop, you'll slowly see the black bars disappear. So they don't get covered up, but disappear as the crop increases and the video shrinks. To see what it's going to look like after cropping and resizing, at the top of the video picture, go View->Resized.

[Lester Burnham]

Once again, many thanks for your help.

I did find some settings I found agreeable in AutoGK - I reduced the threshold in the autocrop settings to 20, and that seemed to give almost spot on results.