I Need Black Bars On my Xvid Clips

[hech54]

How do I convert:
720x576(16:9) no black bars
TO
720x576(5:4) black bars top and bottom
These are Xvid files....37 files in total.
I need to fix 12 of those files(720x576(16:9) no black bars)
to match the other 25 files(720x576(5:4) black bars top and bottom).

Every time my HDD player(attached to my TV) comes to one of the full screen - 720x576(16:9) no black bars
clips....it hangs and will not continue. And besides...the clips with the black bars on top and bottom look better...
less stretched out and out of proportion.

Is this possible?....is this fixable?
Quality is not my main concern obviously...my TV is not a monster...

[jagabo]

You question doesn't really make sense. You need to provide more details. Is your final goal to play those Xvid AVI files via your player? Do you want to make movie DVDs that play in any DVD player? Is the problem simply that your player can't handle 720x576 Xvid AVI with 16:9 PAR/DAR flags? Does it play 720x576 Xvid AVI with 4:3 PAR/DAR flags properly? Do you need to convert to a 4:3 frame size with square pixel encoding?

720x576 is a 5:4 frame size but analog TV is 4:3. You're player will convert that 5:4 frame to 4:3, one way, or another.

[hech54]

I need to change this:



Into this:


The top one does not play in my Trekstor HDD media player....the bottom one plays perfectly in the same player.
MediaInfo shows them as follows:
720x576(16:9)
720x576(5:4)

[jagabo]

I know what your general desire is. But I suspect your problem has nothing to do with the PAR/DAR flags in the 16:9 files. It plays regular DVDs with a frame size of 720x576 and 16:9 flags. It should be able to play Xvid with that too (although stranger things have happened). It may be something else about the Xvid encoding that is causing the problem. You can test this by running one of your 5:4 files through Mpeg4Modfier, setting the PAR/DAR flags to match the 16:9 files, save as a new AVI (it will only take a minute, there is no reencoding, just changing the PAR/DAR flags) and see if that new file plays. If not, then the problem really is the DAR/PAR flags. Then the question becomes, will the player play the file with 4:3 PAR/DAR flags or will or does it require no PAR/DAR flags (square pixel encoding).

The easiest thing to do might be to convert to a 16:9 frame size with square pixels. I would use VirtualDub. Add a resize filter to make the frame 720x400. You should be able to encode this (ie, without adding black letterbox bars) as square pixel. The player should play this with the correct aspect ratio and add letterbox bars itself. But if the player must have a 720x576 frame size and it assumes all 720x576 videos are 4:3 DAR then you should resize to 720x432 and letterboxing to bring the frame size up to 720x576 (all of this is in VirtualDub's resize filter). If the video is interlaced it will need some special handling in addition to this.

I don't know if AviRecomp will do this automatically. But that may be an option.

[hech54]

I don't know if AviRecomp will do this automatically. But that may be an option.

I've done a few test vids with AVIRecomp today. I've come pretty close to what I want but the vids always come out too large......they look perfect but the actual physical size was bigger than 720x576. My fault no doubt.
Also tried VDub today...had NO clue what to resize to then add letterboxing....now I do. (Thank You)
I'm going to try the easy way first with Mpeg4Modfier....then move on to VDub and AVIRecomp.
Thank you for the "figures" I need to input. Hopefully I can get the folder full of clips all straightened
out so I don't hear my son saying "It's Stuck!!" every couple of minutes....