How to get rid of windowboxing?

[Levina]

My friends, I could do with a bit of help again. I have a VIDEO_TS file in 4:3 format (720x576 to be exact). But, the DVD was in 2.35:1 and the result on my 16:9 screen is a windowboxed image. All that screen, and so much of it wasted. So, is there a way I can change this back into the original aspect ratio somehow? I would settle for a 16:9 ratio too, I just want to get rid of the black bars left and right. Is it possible?

Levina

[jman98]

My friends, I could do with a bit of help again. I have a VIDEO_TS file in 4:3 format (720x576 to be exact). But, the DVD was in 2.35:1 and the result on my 16:9 screen is a windowboxed image.

16:9 is 1.77:1, so watching a 2.35:1 image will ALWAYS result in windowboxing, whether your TV is 4:3 or 16:9.

All that screen, and so much of it wasted. So, is there a way I can change this back into the original aspect ratio somehow? I would settle for a 16:9 ratio too, I just want to get rid of the black bars left and right. Is it possible?

Levina

You have an incorrect assumption. The original aspect ratio is 2.35:1. Yes, it is possible to re-encode the video to 4:3 or 16:9, but doing so will lower the quality and it will throw away video information to make the image fit within a 4:3 or 16:9 window. You will lose part of the picture if you do this in other words AND you will make the quality worse. If you must do this, you can resize with an AviSynth script to 16:9, which would be less destructive than resizing to 4:3.

[Levina]

Hmm, maybe I wasn't clear enough. I downloaded the VIDEO_TS file. This file is in 4:3 format. I know that the original DVD was 2.35:1. So, the re-encoding into the 4:3 format is not my doing, but is my problem. I want to get rid of that 4:3 format.
And as to the first part of your answer. When I watch a movie in 2.35:1 ratio, yes, there will be black horizontal bars on my 16:9 screen. Obviously! But NOT windowboxing. Windowboxing means black bars on all 4 sides, so horizontally AND vertically. According to the Wiki it happens "when letterbox effect and pillarbox effect occur simultaneously", as in the case of my file.

[Case]

Many 16:9 tv sets have a zoom feature to enlarge the (4:3) video, to eliminate the side bars. Easier and faster, if available.

[jman98]

Hmm, maybe I wasn't clear enough.

Now that I read your post again, I think you were clear enough and the problem was mine. Sorry.

Well, your situation is certainly better than going from 2.35:1 to 4:3. Since your video is letterboxed (let's not say "windowboxed" as really that doesn't matter), it may be possible to go from 4:3 to 16:9 without a lot of effort. I'm not sure what the best way is to do this. May someone who's familiar with AviSynth can respond to this thread.

[Levina]

Case, unfortunately I have no such zoom feature on my 5 year old tv. Oh well, then I'm just gonna have to watch it on my Mac (until I buy a new tv of course...). Thanks people.

[guns1inger]

If the source is NTSC, you can crop 60 lines from the top, 60 from the bottom, resize to 480, encode and author. You will still get letterbox bars, as 2.35 is wider than 16:9, but you won't get borders all the way round.

If the source is 720 x 576, you need to crop 72 lines from the top, 72 from the bottom, resize up to 576, encode and author.

How you best do this on a Mac I will leave for the Mac experts to explain. However if this is done correctly, the results will be far better than using the zoom facility on a TV.

[Levina]

Right. So I'm thinking: extracting a single VOB file and re-authoring that with ffmpegX, using mentioned specs, should do it. I'll try that tomorrow. Thanks guns1inger.

[guns1inger]

If you have access to a PC, DVD Rebuilder can automate this process by taking a DVD structure as input, cropping, filtering, resizing and re-encoding with a high quality encoder, then re-authoring a DVD structure ready to burn, including keeping original menus. Makes it so simple.