How to resize 352x240 video so people/objects don't look too wide?

[BK_Radley]

Hello everyone.

I have a movie on my HD. These are some of the specs:

MPEG1/NTSC/352x240/29.97fps (before conversion)

Was in bin/cue format, and I had no program that could play it prior to conversion. I convert to mpg file with vcdgear. I play it in WMP full screen. Picture is square (not rectangular), framed by black bars on left, right, top and bottom of screen, and everything in picture appears to be properly proportioned.

I run it through Divx to Dvd, and it automatically gives it a 4:3 aspect ratio. (Only choices are 4:3 or 16:9.) I play vob file, and now the picture is rectangular, the black bars on the left and right gone, and everyone in picture is too short/wide. It is not *horrible* disfigurement, but not pleasant to look at. Now the picture stretches to fill the left and right sides of the screen.

I burn with imgburn, and play in standalone dvd player. Same thing: rectangular picture with short wide people (people who aren't supposed to be short and wide). No black bar on the left or right. Has black bar at the top and bottom, but it is not as wide as black bars are in letterbox format (I hope that's the correct term).

Question I have is, is there a way to edit (with a freeware or shareware program) my files to correct the picture? It might help if I could remove the black bars at the top and bottom, if this would allow the picture to stretch vertically to become more square. Or instead, I wouldn't even mind adding black bars at the sides of the picture if it would squeeze the picture horizontally to make it more square. But how to do this?


Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[BK_Radley]

Also, looking at vobs in divx to dvd, it says: computed frame aspect ratio--1.5000, and 720x480.

[redwudz]

VLC Media Player can play an ISO file, I do it all the time. But you have what appears to be a standard VCD there, why not just burn the ISO as a VCD on a CD disc with ImgBurn? That would be a lot quicker and easier and you wouldn't have the losses from conversion.

But, welcome to our forums.

[BK_Radley]

Hi. Thanks for your reply.

Well, when in bin/cue format it's roughly 825 MB. I can shrink it, still, I want to play this in a standalone dvd player. I know that most standalone dvd players will play some files on cds, but will they play bin/cue, or as you say, iso? Or do I need to convert it to a different format first?

I'm sorry. I'm definitely a newbie.

[Alex_ander]

File system used for VCD allows to have about 800MB on a 700MB CDR (700MB is for ISO data CD). So try to burn your bin/cue image on a CD-RW and play it.

[jman98]

Possible options for VCD:
1) Overburn (Nero allows this - in the past Roxio did not and I don't know if that ever changed) and you might be able to burn the whole thing to an 80 minute CD. You'll just have to try it and see if it works. Burn at the lowest speed possible to have the best chance of success.
2) Do a web search for 90 minute CD-Rs and burn the file as a VCD to one of these discs, again burning as slow as possible. 90 minute CD-Rs violate CD standards, but they are close enough that just about everything can play them and most burners can correctly burn them. To burn a 90 minute CD-R under Nero, you must set up Overburning through a config option and set it to overburn up to 90 minutes because burners recognize these discs as 80 minute CD-Rs and don't understand that they are actually larger. That's why you have to overburn to use them.

[AlanHK]

Hi. Thanks for your reply.

Well, when in bin/cue format it's roughly 825 MB. I can shrink it, still, I want to play this in a standalone dvd player. I know that most standalone dvd players will play some files on cds, but will they play bin/cue, or as you say, iso? Or do I need to convert it to a different format first?

CDR data is 2048 bytes/sector, but VCD data is 2324 bytes, because it has less error correction. So you get about 14% more VCD data on a CD than if you burn it as normal data. So if your 825 MB are decimal, this should fit on a "700 MB/80 min" disc, as these are binary MB.

[BK_Radley]

Thanks for all of your replies.

Not able to burn cue or bin with imgburn, but downloaded burnatonce and loaded and burned cue with that to cd.

Well it all fits on a cd and will play in my dvd player. I am glad of this. But, this video cd is giving me the too short/too wide picture.


Well, if there is no way to change the picture to a normal looking one, I will live. It is nice to know that I can fit the movie on a cd instead of a dvd, though.

Thanks again.

[AlanHK]

Thanks for all of your replies.

Not able to burn cue or bin with imgburn, but downloaded burnatonce and loaded and burned cue with that to cd.

Well it all fits on a cd and will play in my dvd player. I am glad of this. But, this video cd is giving me the too short/too wide picture.


Well, if there is no way to change the picture to a normal looking one, I will live. It is nice to know that I can fit the movie on a cd instead of a dvd, though.

Thanks again.

There should be a setting on your DVD player to select "letterbox" or "full screen", or some other nomenclature. Generally it should detect that automatically, but evidently not in this case.

[redwudz]

When I used to burn SVCD videos to CD discs a few years ago, they would average 820-830MB and fit easily on a 700MB CD. You don't have to overburn. The trick is using Mode 2. It doesn't put the regular error checking information on a CD. That saves 100-140MB or so of space. The highest I went was 834MB. But make sure you use good quality discs.

There's no trick to Mode 2. If you use Nero Burning ROM, just select 'Recorder>Burn Image'. Those were all BIN/CUE. You select the 'CUE' file and the 'BIN' is the movie. The CUE is sort of 'instructions' for the burner. This is similar to a ISO image file in that both are image files.

I've burned ISO files to CD with ImgBurn, and it also works with the BIN file from a BIN/CUE image file. I just tried one that was 829MB and it burned and plays fine on my computer using VLC Media Player. I have version 2.1.0.0 of ImgBurn.

[BK_Radley]

There should be a setting on your DVD player to select "letterbox" or "full screen", or some other nomenclature. Generally it should detect that automatically, but evidently not in this case.

Yes. Unfortunately, it's not available on my player. At least not for this vcd.

But that's cool. It plays, and second best is better than none at all.

[jman98]

Does it play correctly (no stretch) in a 4:3 window on a PC? If so, then the problem is with your DVD player. Surely your DVD player has an option you don't know about for setting the output video to 4:3 (full screen) or 16:9 (letterbox). Also the problem could be on your TV. My Philips DVP-642 has a setting that automatically outputs which of 16:9 or 4:3 the video is encoded for and then it's up to my TV settings to be changed or not to match the screen. All VCD is 4:3, so that's why we think either your TV or DVD player or both are mistakenly treating the VCD as 16:9.

You could download the free Teco Bit Rate Viewer at http://www.tecoltd.com and look at your video file with it and see if says 4:3 or 16:9. If it says 16:9, the person who encoded it set that flag and that's why it looks bad on your TV - your DVD player and TV are obeying the video flag. However, the resolution for VCD should properly be 4:3, so you might be able to change the flag. Maybe someone can suggest a program that can change video flags if you think you need to do that.