Widescreen TV Cap to DVD... Display Question.

[mwkurt]

Hello,

I have a question I hope some of the knowledgable folks here can help me with.

I have captured a widescreen movie to my PC and am converting it to DVD. I have converted it
to mpeg. Using IFO edit, and looking at the IFO file I can see that it says the file is 4x3. I
would like this movie to dispay correctly on a widescreen tv. Will it display correctly as is, without the black bars? I believe that it was broadcasted 1:1.85.

I changed the aspect ratio and played the DvD and the picture was squished even more. I don't want that. I would like to keep the film as is. I then changed the static properties to "Widescreen" and the film played as I wanted. Would this setting cause the film to display properly? Unfortunatly, I do not have a widescreen TV to play this on yet.

I used Vegas Video to render the film to mpeg. I used Widescreen properties and tried rendering as widescreen. That render squished the video and added bars to the sides, so I rendered as regular 4x3 mpeg. Thus this is where I am at.

What can I do to cause this film to play properly on a widescreen tv without squishing the picture even more.

Thanks,
Mark

[Alex_ander]

All you can do without re-encoding is setting 16:9 displayed AR (anamorphic) instead of 4:3 (for accurate 1.85:1 you had to add horizontal bars before rendering to MPEG). You can do it with DVDPatcher.

[mwkurt]

Okay...I still have the original avi so if I need to I can re-render this video. I am thinking in order to do it right, I will need to crop the black bars in the original avi file and then render to a widescreen format. Is this right?
Using VDub to look at the avi file there are approximatly 103 pixels of black bar on the top and bottom of the avi file. Now I know that if I cut off the black bars and use the wrong amount of pixels I will invert fields thus causing me problems. So does anyone know what exact steps I need to do this or can point me to a guide for doing this.
Also...if there are any Vegas users out there, after the cropping is done what would I set the "Event pan/crop" to? 16x8 widescreen or 1:85.1 Academy?
After this is done then I render to the Architect widescreen setting?
Is this thinking correct?
By the way...I am in NTSC land.
Thanks for any help.
Mark

[bobkart]

Assuming this is a DV-AVI. But even if not, it just needs to be 480 pixels high for what I'm saying to apply.

Converting the actual image from 4:3 to 16:9 by cropping the top and bottom simply involves removing the outer 25% of the pixels. That's because 4/3 X 4:3 = 16:9.

So for 720x480 (or whatever by 480) that means you want to end up with 720x360. That's 120 fewer pixels in the vertical direction. That means 60 off the top and 60 off the bottom.

[jagabo]

As bobkart pointed out, the way to create an anamorphic widescreen DVD from a letterboxed 4:3 capture is to cut 60 lines of the top and bottom and resize the remaining 720x360 to 720x480, then encode as 16:9 MPEG2.

If you are in an NTSC country you will run into another problem: interlaced frames. you will have to use a resizer that handles interlaced material (which never works really well) or inverse telecine back to progressive film frames and encode at 23.976 fps with 3:2 pulldown flags.

[mwkurt]

Bobkart and jagabo...thanks for your help, that sounds good.
Jagabo, would you know of an avisynth script or vDub process to do this?
This is a film that is now NTSC DV AVI. Do I need to de-interlace and make progressive again? Any idea how?
Thanks,
Mark

[manono]

...or inverse telecine back to progressive film frames and encode at 23.976 fps with 3:2 pulldown flags.

Do I need to de-interlace and make progressive again? Any idea how?

He said how in his previous post. You IVTC, followed by Crop, followed by Resize:

AVISource("C:\Path\To\Video.avi")
LoadPlugin("C:\Path\To\Decomb.dll")
AssumeTFF()#if TFF, AssumeBFF() if BFF (as is likely)
Telecide(Guide=1).Decimate()
Crop(0,60,0,-60)
Lanczos4Resize(720,480)

This assumes you were correct in saying it's film sourced. An untouched sample would help.