[SOLVED] Is there a way to crop pillar boxes within FAVC before resizing?

[usually_quiet]

I am in the process of figuring out how to go from .wtv to DVD. I did not like Microsoft DVD Maker or Media Center's built-in utility for this.

I can convert from .wtv to .mpg without too much trouble, edit the .mpg with Womble MPEG2-VCR, and use FAVC to create DVD files. The resulting video looks much better than what either of Microsoft's utilites produces, especially color fidelity.

There is one more thing that I would like to do with FAVC, if possible -- remove the pillar boxing on 4:3 video broadcast at 1080i, prior to resizing to DVD resolution. Is there some way to do this using the options in the "Advanced Scripting" tab?

[usually_quiet]

Never mind. I kept searching, found some clues that led me to avisynth's crop function, and figured out the rest on my own.

After setting up everything else, go to the "Advanced Scripting" Tab

For 1080i recordings, type Crop(240,0,-240,0) into the "Preceding the Resize Operation" input box. For 720p recordings, use Crop(160,0,-160,0) instead.

Check "Don't Start Batch File"

The video's aspect ratio would normally still be flagged as 16:9 when converted to DVD instead of 4:3 as it should be. FAVC doesn't have a setting to override the source aspect ratio. That can be corected in the batch files FAVC uses. Wait for FAVC to say it is done creating the custom batch files.

Go to your documents folder, or whatever location you specified for Temporary files. Open the folder labeled "Working Folder X" (where "X" is a number). Find the file labeled Title0.ini and open in Notepad. Change "ASPECT" from 16:9 to 4:3 and save. I only had one title, but there may be other .ini files to change if you have additional titles.

Run "Title.bat"

[guns1inger]

I used to use FAVC, however the last couple of releases had some issues, development stopped, and I looked elsewhere. AVStoDVD uses many of the same tools, including HCEnc for encoding, has more features, is actively developed and supported here by it's author, and is a better tool. Well worth checking out.

[usually_quiet]

Thanks for the recommendation. I have been playing with AVStoDVD today. It does indeed have more options available. It will take time for me to figure out how best to use them, but now I can fix a slight color shift and use interlacing if I wish..