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[aeroliteflyer]

I am convertin DVD to h264. The dvd are obviously 720x480(or 852x480), i am encoding at 640x384(i dont need that much resolution for ipod). Most of my dvd's have black bars on top and bottom on even played back on my widescreen tv, so i guess they are more wide than typical wide screen. i can encode them this way jus fine, they play on the ipod and on tv out ok. but why do i want to encode the little bit of black space above and below the video. I guess what i am saying is how can i crop out the unused portion of the video that is there but just black. I have tried to mess with crop settings and resolution settings but haven't gotten anything with an appropriate aspect ratio. Thanks for reading.

[jagabo]

Solid black bars take hardly any bitrate to encode. I wouldn't worry about it. But you can crop them away if you want. Resize then crop. That way you don't have to figure out the right frame size.

[aeroliteflyer]

Cool, thanks for the reply