Convert Pseudo Widescreen to Proper Widescreen

[simonw2008]

I've got a load of video I captured from a pseudo widescreen camcorder.

I say pseudo becuase its really still 4:3 with black bars in the picture top and bottom. So when it plays on a PC I get the black bars top and bottom and also left and right because the PC thinks its 4:3.

So I need to do 2 things:
1) Make the PC think its 16:9
2) Crop the black bars of the top and bottom

Anyone got any ideas on how to do both please?

[redwudz]

What video format are they? In order to crop the bars, you will have to re-encode, which will lower the quality. But if they are DV format, you could open them in VirtualDub or VD Mod and use the 'null' filter. Then the cropping feature is available. It's fairly easy to use. Then you can save out the video as DV again, or frameserve it directly to a MPEG encoder if your final format is to be DVD. You can also resize in VD (M) if that's needed.

[guns1inger]

Assuming PAL, given your location, you need to crop 72 lines from the top, and 72 from the bottom, then resize back to 576 in total. You can do this with a simple avisynth script, or in virtualdub.

However, given this footage is most likely interlaced, you should probably keep it all in avisynth, where you have the best range of deinterlacing filters. The basic process is deinterlace, crop, resize, interlace.

That said, here is a guide that uses virtualdub : https://forum.videohelp.com/topic316902.html . This guide is designed to create a 16:9 DVD, so you would save to DV instead. The final problem you will face is actually changing the AR flag int he DV AVI file. I don't believe that virtualdub can do it, but it may not matter anyway. You should simply be able to tell your editor that it is 16:9 footage, regardless of what the inetrnal flag says.

[simonw2008]

Yes the video is interlaced. I've just looked at avisynth and it looks too hard for me.

[guns1inger]

Try the virtualdub method I posted (above)

[poisondeathray]

If you are just playing back on PC and don't want to permanantly alter your original, you can alter playback in some software media players. For example in mpc by right clicking:

video frame => strech to window
pan & scan=> scale to 16:9 TV (this will "autocrop" the black bars)

You can fine tune by entering custom pan&scan #'s, aspect ratio, video frame, and many other viewing options

If you want to re-encode, the virtualdub method with internal filters is about as easy as you can get