Best way to repurpose 4:3 DV PAL video for 16:9

[nz2003]

I have approx 4 hrs worth of 4:3 DV PAL video captured 2 years ago which needs to be edited for eventual destination of PAL DVD. I want the video to look best on a widescreen television but unfortunately it was not framed with 16:9 in mind, so some manual reframing is required.

Which of the following approaches would be best for display on widescreen television?

(a) Crop the video to 14:9, reframing as necessary. Save the result as a 14:9 letterbox within standard 4:3. Crop to 16:9 on display.

(b) Crop the video to 14:9. Resize anamorphically and save as a 14:9 pillarbox within anamorphic 16:9. Display as pillarbox.

(c) Crop the video to 16:9. Save the result as 16:9 letterbox within standard 4:3. Crop to 16:9 on display.

(d) Crop the video to 16:9. Resize anamorphically and save as anamorphic 16:9. Display as is.


I believe (a) and (c) are simplest to perform. I believe there is no effect on the interlaced structure.

For (b) and (d) anamorphic resizing is required. For (d) this requires that 432 lines get resized to 576 (or really 216 resized to 288 per field) before saving. Obviously the result will be a bit softer, but will interlacing also cause problems? Does it have to be deinterlaced to 576/25p first?

Is there any advantage to (a), (b) compared to (c), (d)? Are the sides of a 14:9 pillarbox visible or objectionable on a widescreen television?

(If this should have been posted on a different forum, please redirect me)

Thanks in advance
R.

[wwaag]

An Alternative

I've had a similar problem--roughly 20 years of 4:3 home videos (68 2hr DVDs) to display on a 65" 16:9 Mitsubishi. While you can crop, you do lose info and suffer a loss in quality, especially if you try to display on a large TV. Plus, if you've got a lot of material like I do, it's pretty time-consuming.

My solution has been a $90 Panasonic DVD player (when I bought it, I didn't know it had this capability). For 4:3 materials on a 16:9 TV, it has a "shrink" display mode. Basicallly, it maintains the correct aspect, by putting black bars on the sides. The black bars are actually not that large since you are now displaying the horizontal "overscan" area as well, so you are actually displaying more information than normal. It also has an incremental zoom capability (e.g. 101%, 102%, etc. unlike others that have simply 2x or 4x, etc.). By setting the zoom to 110%, the black bars on the edges are very small, while minimizing the information lost in the vertical. There must be others that have this capability, although my 4 other players do not. They simply display a 4:3 image to a full 16:9 thereby stretching the image, in which case, you must use the TV's modes to correct (which are pretty terrible, especially for home videos).

Just a suggestion.

wwaag