Letterbox to Anamorphic Widescreen

[viper2843]

I have a DVD movie that is in 4:3 Letterbox format (a 2.35:1 widescreen movie). I want to convert it to anamorphic widescreen. I am sort of new at this stuff so any help would be greatly appreciated. I have both a Mac and Windows so I can use tools on both platforms if necessary. If there are any tutorials already in existence links would be helpful. Thanks and apologies if this has been asked before.

[drewzor]

Well I dont know if this is what would be considered the "right way" but its the way I do it. I copy the dvd to my hard drive and convert the vob files to avi. Then using virtual dub crop the bars away leaving only the video, I use aspect_2 to be sure i have a widescreen aspect and sometimes do leave a few black pixels either side of the image to maintain a perfect display aspect, the tv overscan usually covers it anayway.

I then use TMPGenc to convert my avi files to mpg anamorphic 16:9. I then usually just change the extention mpg to vob however sometimes that doesn't work and you need to create a dummy dvd. Copy the vobs back to the main directory and you should have the original menu that plays out to widescreen.

note in your case having 21:9 (2.35:1)you WILL want some black above and below these are my calculations in pal
computer pixel display sizes are
4:3 displays 768x576
and the picture you see within is
21:9 displays 752x320
So crop to this aspect
16:9 displays 768x432
which will leave you with 56 pixes above and below for black bars and 5 pixels of black on the left and right (which are hardly noticable) and you TV's overscan will hide them.

[jagabo]

letterbox to widescreen NTSC DVD:

Crop 60 lines off top, 60 lines off bottom of frame, leaving 720x360. Resize what's left to 720x480, encode to 16:9 MPEG2 for DVD.

If your source is interlaced be sure to use an interlace aware resizing method.

[viper2843]

Thank you both for you replies. I am pretty sure I understand how to do it now but I am a bit new with some of the tools. I am not sure how to crop and resize the video in VirtualDub. Is this possible in VirtualDub? Do you recommend any tutorials for me to get started with the software. Thanks.

[drewzor]

sure! VDub is easy once you get to know it and basically everything is done under *video, *filters *add then what ever you want to do. In your case you would add a "null transform" which once added you will notice a "cropping" button available at the bottom of the filters page. If you search under guides on the left of this website you should find something tho i dont know of any tutorials that are very clear and straight forward.. I might make one up myself in the next few days.. I'll let you know

[ark]

Viper2843

Below is the summary of what I have learnt from all the posts/ guides in this site - and should be of help to you.

1) DVD D1 Spec would allow ONLY frame size of 720 Wide x 576 high for PAL, and 720 W x 480 H for NTSC.

2) DVD spec would accept only 2 DAR(Display Aspect Ratio) flags for the MPEG; 4:3 or 16:9. This means that on TV, Movies with 4:3 DAR would show as 720x 576 for PAL and 720 x 480 for NTSC. For 16:9 DAR it would show as 853 x 576 for PAL and 853 x 480 for NTSC.

3) Any movie having Video Aspect of higher than 1.77 (i.e 16:9) would require black bands to be provided on top and bottom to bring the final frame height to 576 for PAL and 480 for NTSC

4) All non 4:3 movies would need to be reduced to a maximum Video Width of 853 pixels when stretched while playing on the TV. To keep proper video aspect ratio to avoid image distortion, the picture height would need to be calculated accordingly.

For example, a 2.35 aspect ratio NTSC video on 4:3 DAR would have picture height of 304 with black bonds for letter boxing of (480-304)/2=38 on top and 38 on bottom.

Same video when used with a DAR of 16:9 would have a picture height of 853/2.35=362. This could be taken as 360 (giving slightly fatter people in the picture) or 368 (slightly slimmer people in the picture). So we will have a picture area of 720x368 with (480-368)/2= 56 wide black bands on top and bottom for letter boxing. In this case, Without the picture being stretched to 853 wide on a wide screen TV, the picture would be squeezed to 720 only and the people will be showing up tall and slim!!

I hope this makes it clear to you what should be done to convert anamorphic 4:3 letter boxed movie to 16:9 letter boxed.

Regarding the software to be used, since you are already using TMPGEnc, you could convert direct from MPG2 to MPG2. Some of the free MPG2 encoders on this site would do the same (eg MEDIACODER). To get idea of the aspect ratio of the picture without letterboxing, you can use VdubMod. Extract the M2V (Video) stream from the VOB files using Rejig (freeware) and then use VdubMod to find out the picture aspect ratio. In TMPGenc, crop off the needed number of black pixels from top and bottom to convert the M2V suitable for 16:9 DAR. Last of all, use DVDPatcher to set the DAR flag to 16:9 if it is not already such. DVDPatcher will show you the DAR of the source M2V when you open the file. Use rejig to extract the audio stream also, mp2 or ac3, and then use any suitable DVD authoring program to author the 16:9 DVD

[manono]

Just some minor corrections:
1) Isn't 704x480/576 also D1, or doesn't it qualify?
2) 720x576=1.25:1=5:4. 720x480=1.5:1=3:2. When resized, PAL 4:3 becomes 768x576 (576 x 4/3 = 768), and NTSC 4:3 becomes 640x480. PAL 16:9 becomes 1024x576 (576 x 16/9 = 1024) and NTSC 16:9 becomes 854x480.
3) OK, although I would have worded it differently.
4) As stated, 4:3 NTSC movies are resized to 640x480. A widescreen 4:3 2:35:1 movie becomes 640x272 plus the black bars

[viper2843]

Thank you to everyone that posted. I think I am ready to make my DVD. Thanks again for all your help.

[SingSing]

I have quite a few 2.35:1 DVDs. The $69 solution is to buy a DVD player with 1.2x, or 1.5x zoom DVD player like this :

http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?modelId=MODL027675&pathId=10&page=1

[ark]

Regarding the figures given by manono, I had the same confusion earlier.
After going through all the guides / forum discussions, the figures given by me were arrived at and these hold as can be verified practically. (e.g. PAL does not become 1024 x 576 but remains 854x576 although it is called 16:9)

[manono]

You're still confused.

854x576=1.48:1

There are no films at all with that aspect ratio when resized by the player. There's no way at all that's a PAL 16:9 AR.

1024x576=1.778:1=16:9

...the figures given by me were arrived at and these hold as can be verified practically.

I don't think so, although I'd like to see you try. Read this:

http://seemoredigital.net/03_Video_Only_Info/What_is_an_anamorphic_encode.html

Because we already know the 'height' uses 576 pixels, all we need to do is multiply 576 by 1.7777 and we get a target width-ways pixel quantity of 1024.0000. And because you also now know that all PAL anamorphic DVD's contain just 720 'width-ways' pixels (and not the required 1024 pixels) ARS signalling has to be applied to stretch the 'width-ways' pixels to an imaginary target width of 1024 pixels.

[ark]

But manono
Have you authored a PAL DVD with your figures yet?
I have tried and it would not work.

[manono]

How the PAL 16:9 DVD is resized by the player has nothing to do, directly, with the encoding, and nothing to do, period, with authoring, so I don't know what you're asking. Nor do I much care.

PAL has to be 720x576 in order to author. That's one of the acceptable resolutions anyway, and far and away the most common. Do you just not understand DAR (Display Aspect Ratio, 4:3 or 16:9), and how a player resizes 720x576 based on the DAR? Maybe these articles will help:

http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm

And here's one I wrote. Scroll down to the Star Wars picture:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/articles/whatsonthatDVD-part1.html

This is a frame from Star Wars IV, A New Hope, from the Star Wars box set. One thing you might notice is that Luke and C-3PO look a bit stretched vertically, or tall and skinny. This is how this frame (and all the others) is stored on the DVD. You may have noticed the same thing in the VDubMod picture above, The figure dressed in black standing against the wall in back is also very tall and thin. NTSC DVD resolution is 720x480 (and PAL, 720x576). It's 16:9 anamorphically enhanced, and the player will display it at the correct Aspect Ratio by stretching it horizontally. For NTSC 16:9 DVDs, the resolution when correctly resized becomes about 854x480 (480 x 16/9 = 853.33). For PAL, the correctly resized resolution is 1024x576. Again, this resizing is done by the player, depending on whether the Display Aspect Ratio (DAR) is 16:9 or 4:3.

[ark]

Many thanks Tom
Every day is for something new. I am going thru your guide.
Perhaps our confusion will be cleared or it may increase further.

But one question remains. Why do All-In-One convereters like ConvertXtoDVD or DVDSanta or WinAVI etc etc are producing Anamorphic PAL DVDs where the stretched picture width is 854 and not 1024?

[manono]

I've never used any of the programs you mentioned. The only all-in-one DVD program I respect is DVD Rebuilder, and even that one has enough limitations that I don't use it. If they're producing the DVDs with correct aspect ratio, then I would guess that your player is downsizing it. That is, rather than displaying a PAL 16:9 DVD at 1024x576, maybe it's really displaying it at 854x480, the same as NTSC 16:9. The ratio (16:9=1.778:1) is the same, so it'll have the proper aspect ratio. Either that or you're mistaken somehow. One thing you can be pretty sure of, and that is they're not being resized to 854x576.

[ark]

Once again thanks to Tom (manono) for clearing our confusion

I have been busy last few weeks verifying the stretched (thru DAR) 16:9 frame size for PAL. It is indeed 1024 x 576. For NTSC it is 853 x 480.

The very brief guide I wrote for Viper2843 should be revised accordingly.