16x9 PAL HD Mpeg2 file Windowboxed on NTSC 4:3 ???

[JohnnyBates]

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Received from Australia. I believe this Mpeg was sourced by a HD Stream to PC TV card. It was the burned to an ISO dvd and mailed to me.

The video was shot for Aussie 4:3 TV back in 1996. It was then rebroadcast earlier this year via an HD stream.

I live in the US.

I received the file and edited the commercials out with Womble Wizard.

When I view the file in VirtualDub it looks squeezed. Everything tall and skinny.

When I author this as a dvd and play it back on my PAL capable DVD player to my 4:3 NTSC TV the image is windowboxed. It’s unsqueezed. Proportions are fine but it’s windowboxed (black bars all around with video image centered).

I would have expected the image to be played back unsqueezed but fill the 4:3 screen from top to bottom leaving black bars on the L and R.

Could this be a player/tv problem or is it an issue with the file?

Ideally the screen would be filled from top to bottom with black on the L and R.

Any way to accomplish this without losing the quality of the file? It looks amazing. Only prob is it’s windowboxed.

Thanks,

JB

[guns1inger]

A 4:3 image encoded within a 16:9 frame will have pillarboxing (black vertical bars left and right). Because you have your DVD player connected to a 4:3 TV, I suspect you have it set to display 16:9 material as letterboxed. So when you play this file back, it will simply add the black bars top and bottom to make the display letterboxed, and show the movie in between. This is how it would treat any widescreen DVD. Because this is a 4:3 programmed in a widescreen format, you end up with borders all around.

Try setting your DVD player to output Pan and Scan to your TV and it might show the 4:3 image full screen.

Otherwise you can try using the zoom feature on your player, if it has one. This will give you a softer image, but might suffice.

Otherwise, you need to crop it, resize it, and encode it as 4:3.

[JohnnyBates]

Ok thanks. That makes perfect sense. I'm sure my dvd player is set to display 16x9 as letterboxed.

A crop, resize and re-encode will cause the quality to suffer no?

JB

[guns1inger]

Yes. Any resize and re-encode risks a quality drop. Try the pan and Scan option first.