Cropping a WMV from 16:9 to 4:3

[JohnnyDrama]

I have a TV show that was streamed in 16:9 even though the show was 4:3 so there are black bars on the sides of the video. The problems that I am having are because the file is WMV. I usually use VirtualDub but it doesn't support the file.

Can anyone suggest a good program for cropping a WMV in this way?

Thanks in advance.

[poisondeathray]

You can use virtualdub if you download the .wmv plugin

Another option is to use avidemux

Cheers

[jagabo]

But why bother?

[JohnnyDrama]

Thanks for the advice. I would like to bother because the show is actually 4:3, so there are black bars added to the sides to make it 16:9. Then when I make it full screen, the media player adds a black bar to the top to put it back into 4:3 for my monitor, which means I now have a complete black border around the video in full screen.

[poisondeathray]

If you are just playing it on your PC, you can do without re-encoding the video (losing quality)

Most media players have options to stretch to screen, change aspect ratios, cropping, and a multitude of other options.

[JohnnyDrama]

Hmm, I have installed the plugin, but whenever I try to load the file, I get an error message saying "Replicated Data Length is zero"

[poisondeathray]

If it's VC-1 encoded .wmv, you have to enable VC-1 in the ffdshow vfw configuration. Use mediainfo to determine what codec is being used.

You could also use the DirectShow input driver plugin, with the latest virtualdub beta (1.8.0)

Otherwise, you could frameserve into virtualdub, using avisynth

[JohnnyDrama]

The first two didn't work. I got the same error message. Would you be able to explain a bit how I would frameserve? I have never done that before. Thanks for all your help.

BTW, it is VC-1

[poisondeathray]

Are you sure you enabled ffdshow VFW encoder config? Virtualdub should work with VC-1 .wmv once properly configured.

Search for avisynth guides. It may take you a few hours to learn the basics, but start with these:

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic99389.html
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page

[JohnnyDrama]

Yeah, I did that. I still got the same error message. I'll try to learn some Avisynth basics. Thanks