Black side bars

[crazysane]

I know this topic has probably been answered before, but I can't find the answer (search brought up a bunch, but nothing that answered my specific question).

I downloaded a bunch of avi's of a japanese film series never released stateside, and several have black bars on the side as well as on top and bottom. How do I get rid of the side bars? Is there a program that I could just drag my mouse and outline what portion of the video I want left? Any help would be magnificent.

Thank you ahead of time for any help.

[manono]

Hi-

You'll have to reencode it, but Gordian Knot will allow you to crop away the black and resize before reencoding. The easier to use AutoGK will do the reencoding pretty much automatically and more easily, but you'll have to access the Hidden Options to do any cropping. By using a combination of the 2 programs, GKnot to find the crop values, and AutoGK to enter the crop values in the Hidden Options, and then to reencode, the job shouldn't be too hard for you.

[crazysane]

I tried Gordian knot, and maybe I'm missing something, but I plug in the pixel edit parameters in the resolution box, but when virtualdub pops up, the video still has the black bars on the side.... am I missing a step?

[manono]

So you're going to use GKnot for the whole thing? OK, so you opened the AVI in it, and went to the Resolution Tab. The Input Pixel Aspect Ratio should be 1:1. You use the Pixel Crop to get rid of the bars. You want the Aspect Error to be close to zero (less than maybe 0.5%) at whatever final resolution you choose (something close to the original if reencoding for near the original file size). I suspect you didn't save the .avs before doing the encoding. Above the picture, go File->Save And Encode. Hit Save And Encode again, at which point you'll Save the .avs and then be taken to the Encoder Control Panel to take it the rest of the way. There are guides around for GKnot if you're not sure what to do after that.

[manono]

Adding more later: If whoever made it didn't have enough sense to crop it, there's also a pretty good chance he never resized it properly either. What's the resolution of this AVI? There's at least a small chance it shouldn't be 1:1, but 4:3 or 16:9. About all I can suggest is to look above the video after cropping and resizing and click View->Resize and switch back and forth between 1:1, 4:3, and 16:9, scrolling around in the video to see which looks more "normal". If you can find something round, like a ball, sun, moon, etc., that might help.

[crazysane]

Adding more later: If whoever made it didn't have enough sense to crop it, there's also a pretty good chance he never resized it properly either. What's the resolution of this AVI? There's at least a small chance it shouldn't be 1:1, but 4:3 or 16:9. About all I can suggest is to look above the video after cropping and resizing and click View->Resize and switch back and forth between 1:1, 4:3, and 16:9, scrolling around in the video to see which looks more "normal". If you can find something round, like a ball, sun, moon, etc., that might help.

First off, where do I view->resize? (Possible noob bashing coming) Vdub wasn't resizing the video, so I aborted it's encoding every time. Do I keep it going, and it will resize in the end?

And I hope this helps, but when I run through TMPGenc, it lists the size as 704 x 288. It looks 16 x 9, just shrunken due to the side bars and larger than average top and bottom bars. Really, I wouldn't care if it was full screen, I just don't want the bars on the side.

Thanks so much, I really appreciate all the help so far.

[sacajaweeda]

In VDub....
Video>Filters>Add.....etc, etc.

[manono]

Hi-

First off, where do I view->resize?

In GKnot, after you open the AVI, you have the movie, right? You can scroll around and see the whole thing. At the top of that screen are 2 buttons. One says File, and you go into that to create the AviSynth script file (the .avs) through which you'll do your encoding, if you continue to use GKnot as the front end for VDubMod (as opposed to doing the encoding yourself, opening your .avs directly in VDubMod). The other button says View. Hit that button and then hit Resized. However, since you said it's 704x288, it probably is 1:1. In any event, with 1:1 set as the Input Pixel Aspect Ratio, scroll around anyway to see that things look "normal", that people don't look stretched horizontally or vertically, and that round things aren't ovals.

Vdub wasn't resizing the video, so I aborted it's encoding every time. Do I keep it going, and it will resize in the end?

I'd suggest doing what I said earlier about going into Save And Encode to first Save the .avs, and then letting GKnot act as the front end for the encoding. If you want to do it directly in VDubMod anyway, first Save the .avs, and then open that in VDubMod (the .avs and not the AVI). If you then scroll around, you'll see that it's been cropped and resized already. This will also allow you to use Fast Recompress (Video->Fast Recompress, in VDubMod) which will encode for you probably 30% faster than if you crop and resize in VDubMod, forcing you to use the slower and inferior Full Processing Mode.

This guide will take you from where you first hit File->Save And Encode above the video in GKnot. You can skip the stuff about filtering and the Compression Test:

http://www.doom9.org/gknot-xvid.htm

[crazysane]

Adding more later: If whoever made it didn't have enough sense to crop it, there's also a pretty good chance he never resized it properly either. What's the resolution of this AVI? There's at least a small chance it shouldn't be 1:1, but 4:3 or 16:9. About all I can suggest is to look above the video after cropping and resizing and click View->Resize and switch back and forth between 1:1, 4:3, and 16:9, scrolling around in the video to see which looks more "normal". If you can find something round, like a ball, sun, moon, etc., that might help.

I was reading this a little more closely... is there supposed to be a pictur IN gknot? Damn, I hate being ignorant....

[crazysane]

Hi-

First off, where do I view->resize?

In GKnot, after you open the AVI, you have the movie, right? You can scroll around and see the whole thing.

No, actually, I can't.... I clicked on the corner open avs button and get the message "File is not a valid d2v project, avi, or avs file!" I think I'll demux the whole thing and try that then....

[manono]

Oh, so it won't open? Then you have a problem. Do you have the latest GKnot? It's Ver 0.35.0. You'll see the version you have at the top of the GKnot screen. You can get it here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=77391

If that doesn't help, then what kind of an AVI is it (XviD, DivX, etc). If you open it in GSpot, it'll tell you. If worse comes to worst, you'll have to do the cropping in VDubMod, as described by sacajaweeda earlier.

[crazysane]

Well, it was actually a ogm, so I demuxed the thing with OGMdemuxer and the avi opened up fine.

What I was doing was just opening the avi in the encoder screen adn tweaking the resolution screen. Thanks for the help.

Now to get .srt's to work