How to remove black side panels from a 4:3 picture recorded as 16:9

[topcat55]

I have a file which was recorded as 16:9 but the "real" video is only 4:3

I want to remove the black areas on the sides of the 16:9 and save the file as a 4:3

I need a simple, quick way to do this

I have looked at Virtualdub but am not sure exactly what to do out of the myriad of options?

Any help would be appreciated

TopCat

[guns1inger]

What format do you want the final video in ?

Cropping in vdub is easy. Open the Filters screen and add the Null Transform filter. This does nothing to the image, but you can now click on the crop button and visually remove the pillarboxing. Once you have finished cropping, add a resize filter and resize to 640 x 480 and see how it looks. If it is OK, set your compression settings and save the new video.

[topcat55]

thanks for your reply

what I am trying to do is combine two video clips into a single title on a DVD - I am using Nerovision 5 to do this

the first clip is a standard 4:3 - the second one is also 4:3 but came from a widescreen 16:9 transmission

when I put them into a Nero title the first one looks fine but the second one has black bars on all sides even though it is really 4:3

I will have a go at cropping and resizing as you suggest

thanks again

[guns1inger]

For DVD, resize to 720 x 576 (I assume this is PAL footage ?) and save out using a lossless codec such as Huffyuv or Lagarith so you don't lose quality through the extra re-encoding back to mpeg-2.