"Enhanced for 16x9 Display"

[Midwest Coaster Comp]

I've had great success capturing 4:3 Laserdiscs and burning them to DVD
but now I'd like to try some letterboxed Laserdiscs.
I'd prefer that when played back on my Coby portable (16x9 screen)
that it use as much of the screen as possible (no cropped sides)
and when played on standard TVs (4x3) it be conventionaly
letterboxed. Is this a capture or authoring function ?

I have a noname (K-World) PCI capture card with an onboard Conexant chip
and Roxio 8, Nero 6 and Ulead 3.5 software available.
(Ulead seems to work best for capturing)

So far any settings I've tried in tests work for only ONE type of display.

[Scorpion King]

Aspect Ratio (AR). You can answer your own question if you look at it in a different way. ok.

If I have a 4:3 tv and I watch a station that is broadcasting a movie. The movie is 16:9 but the transmission is 4:3. How will my tv display this? You know the answer. The 16:9 movie will be letterboxed (black bars), but the letterbox will be in the transmission also because I said the transmission was 4:3. If I capture this movie I will also capture the letterbox. My capture, if I choose the proper AR (aspect ratio) will be 4:3 - because the source is 4:3.

On the other hand. If the broadcaster transmits the movie in it's true form, 16:9, then it will still display the same way on my little 4:3 tv, but on your 16:9 tv it will display full screen (no black bars anywhere). If I capture this 16:9 transmission and I setup my capture device properly then I can get a true 16:9 (ar) video. (haven't had the chance to do that yet )

If I capture a 4:3 transmission with a 16:9 AR then the video will look squished and unnatural.

To change the AR of a video and keep the video looking right (natural) then I must either crop and resize, crop and add black bars, or just add black bars - depending on what I have to start with and what I'm trying to do with it.

So to display properly on your 16:9 tv and also display properly (with black bars) on your 4:3 tv, then the video must be 16:9 AR.

Hope I got at least some of that right. Its been a pretty tough day.

Heres the guide: https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=174200

Good luck.

[manono]

Hi-

but on your 16:9 tv it will display full screen (no black bars anywhere).

Unless it wider than 1.78:1, in which case it'll also be letterboxed. 16:9 DVDs of 2.35:1 movies show on 16:9 TV sets with a significant amount of black bars

So to display properly on your 16:9 tv and also display properly (with black bars) on your 4:3 tv, then the video must be 16:9 AR.

I don't guess I'm contradicting you here, but widescreen 4:3 movies do display with proper AR on a 16:9 TV set. It's just that they'll be sitting in the middle of the screen, with black bars on all 4 sides. Unless you use the Zoom. And unless your 16:9 TV set is so lousy that it stretches it to fill the screen left/right, thus destroying the AR.

In addition, Midwest Coaster Comp says he'll be displaying on his widescreen laptop (which probably isn't 16:9, but 16:10, if it's like my widescreen monitor) and also on his 4:3 TV set. It should be noted that there's no benefit at all, and real resolution loss, to converting widescreen 4:3 to true 16:9 by cropping away the black above and below, for display on 4:3 TV sets. The reason is that when 16:9 DVDs get displayed on 4:3 TV sets (in the US anyway, unless you have a Sony Wega to do the anamorphic squeeze for you), a quarter of the lines of pixels are tossed out to maintain AR. You'll lose 25% of the already compromised resolution.

[jagabo]

Capture as 4:3 at 720x480. Crop 60 lines off the top and bottom leaving 720x360. Resize that to 720x480. Encode as 16:9 MPEG. Burn as 16:9 DVD.

For best results inverse telecine back to 23.976 film frames before resizing.

[FulciLives]

Capture as 4:3 at 720x480. Crop 60 lines off the top and bottom leaving 720x360. Resize that to 720x480. Encode as 16:9 MPEG. Burn as 16:9 DVD.

For best results inverse telecine back to 23.976 film frames before resizing.

What he said.

Only just be carefull how you do the resizing if the source is interlaced and you are leaving it that way.

In other words be sure to do the resize using an interlaced "friendly" method.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman