Video Aspect (4:3 vs 16:9) Help

[bowmah]

ok, I dump miniDV footage, edit, and then author to DVD. I am using Ulead Video Studio 7.0 to do this. My miniDV is not 16:9 but it is definitely wider than 4:3 from just eyeballing it. I am interested to output my dumped MPG's into true 16:9. Meaning if I watch it on a 16:9 TV, it will fit nicely and when watched on a 4:3 TV, it will show 2 black bars. ANy idea on how and where I should begin to do this? Is it even possible given my hardware and software. Here is my work flow.

MiniDV --> MPG
Post production in Ulead Video Studio
Export as DVD files
Burn to DVD

Any info or help would be greatly appreciated.

[guns1inger]

MiniDV is either 4:3 or 16:9. There is no in between. Check the resolution. It will be 720 x 480 or 720 x 576.

To do what you wan't will require cropping the image down to 16:9 aspect ratio, then resizing up to full res to stretch the image. You need to then encode as 16:9, and author as 16:9.

Be aware, if you shot the footage 4:3 (which it sounds like you have), chances are it is not framed for 16:9. This means just doing a simple crop will probably result in people having their heads cut off and framing generally looking wrong. You may be able to overcome this by using an editor that allows you to reposition the frame as you go using keyframes, but this will be time consuming.

[bowmah]

Thanks for the reply. Here are my calculations. What am I missing.

4:3 = 1.333 ratio
16:9 = 1.777 ratio
720x480 = 1.5 ratio
720x576 = 1.25

My miniDV is not marketed as a 16:9 format like the newer ones so I can only assume it is shot in 4:3. After importing my MPG, I can see the properties of the file and it says 720x480 so that is somewhere in between. Unless Ulead does something to the file during the download.

I am ok with "cropping" or adding that black bars (top and below) during post production. If this is the case, I will shoot with that in mind. Just like when I shoot still photos knowing that I my final output is an 8x10, I know the edge of the 4x6 will be cropped out.

So is there an easy converter or something that can allow me to reposition the viewable area by any chance? I don't want to simply add black bars. I want to out put in 16:9 to match the newer TV's. TIA!

[jagabo]

Thanks for the reply. Here are my calculations. What am I missing.

4:3 = 1.333 ratio
16:9 = 1.777 ratio
720x480 = 1.5 ratio
720x576 = 1.25

What you're missing is that display aspect ratio (the shape of the displayed picture) has nothing to do with the frame size in pixels. Pixels can be square, tall and skinny, or short and fat.

When your DV camcorder displays the video on TV it uses pixels that are slightly taller than they are wide -- so the final display aspect ratio comes out as 4:3.

When you see the same video data on the computer the pixels are being drawn as squares. So the video appears a little wider than 4:3.

If you want to convert your 720x480 DV footage to 16:9, crop 120 scanlines of the height (for example, 60 off the top and 60 off the bottom) and resize what's left to 720x480 and tell the MPEG encoder the display aspect ratio is 16:9.

[bowmah]

Thanks Jagabo, is there a detailed tutorial for the process you talked about? I would like to check this out.

[guns1inger]

If using virtualdub, add a Null Transform filter to enable the Cropping function, and crop 6 from Y1 and 60 from Y2. Then add a Resize filter and set the size to 720 x 480 (assumes NTSC source). You will now have vertically stretched output. Frameserve this to an mpeg encoder that has been set 16:9 and produce an mpeg2 file. Author this as 16:9 and you should playback OK on a widescreen TV.

However my original warning still stands :

Be aware, if you shot the footage 4:3 (which it sounds like you have), chances are it is not framed for 16:9. This means just doing a simple crop will probably result in people having their heads cut off and framing generally looking wrong. You may be able to overcome this by using an editor that allows you to reposition the frame as you go using keyframes, but this will be time consuming.