converted from dvr-ms but aspect ratio problem for portable player

[terramir]

Okies I got one of these portable players (2.5inch SATAHD plays dvd, vcd, divx, rm/rmvb) and well I use a polaroid 8" widescreen for dvd player(resolution 480x234 but it's fine till I get a 15" computer lcd up and running on 12V) (got the spare screen in surplus for $45) so total setup for less than 100 bucks.
Well this is what I do with my HDTV files
okies I got these files I use MCEbuddy to convert it to Divx and then use virtual-dub to up the volume by 600% otherwise I can't hear em on the polariod screen. but some of the shows I watch are black barred on the sides since I don't want to burn the little screen I need some way to convert the file so the black bars disappear out of the video since it seem to be part of the source.
anyone got an easy way to do this with free utilities with a core2duo 4300 clocked to 2.7ghz with 2 gigs of ram
the first conversion to divx takes about an hour in the background (memcoder won't use but 60%max of resources) and well I'd really like to do this with a batch in the end since I record some of these shows daily.
also it there a way to batch file virtual dub to up the audio volume on some shows?
terramir

[Baldrick]

Crop the black borders when you use virtualdub, under video->filters and first add the null transform filter and then click on the cropping-button.

Or try find a tool that can crop and reconvert the dvr-ms files directly, maybe virtualdub with the mpeg plugin or virtualdubmpeg2 to avoid that you reconvert twice.

[jagabo]

since I don't want to burn the little screen I need some way to convert the file so the black bars disappear out of the video

LCD displays don't suffer burn-in like plasmas.