Changing aspect ratio without losing any picture quality

[m93]

Is there a way to change the aspect ratio of a video (codec is XviD but it says DX50 in VLC - not sure what that means) without losing ANY picture quality?

I know the method of using MPEG4Modifier, but that is not the permanent solution that I am looking for.

Thanks in advance
-m93

[Baldrick]

It is the only method that doesn't require reconverting(losing quality).

[AlanHK]

I know the method of using MPEG4Modifier, but that is not the permanent solution that I am looking for.

How is that not permanent?

It can do exactly what you request, changes the aspect ratio without reencoding the video.

[m93]

Are you certain that there's no other way? My media player still reads it as a 4:3 video instead of 16:9.

[Baldrick]

What containers does your player support? Maybe you could make an mp4 or mkv with 16:9 from the avi xvid without reconverting the video, using yamb(mp4) and mkvtoolnix(mkv).

[m93]

My player only supports avi and wmv containers

[netmask56]

Three questions!

1. What type of player do you have?
2. Can you give a step by step description of how you set up and use MPEG4Modifier?
3. When you save the new file out of MPEG4Modifier does Mediainfo confirm the change?

[jagabo]

Not all players, AVI splitters, Xvid decoders, and renderers support PAR/DAR flags. If they don't work with your player you'll have to resize and reencode with square pixels.

[m93]

@jagabo: Which program would do this best and what settings should I use to keep the video quality the same?

@netmask56:
1. Creative Zen Vision W (but its irrelevant because I still want my video file to truly be 16:9)
2. The original video is 4:3 (640x480). I have used all of the 16:9 options available
3. No

[jagabo]

@jagabo: Which program would do this best and what settings should I use to keep the video quality the same?

If you're asking how you can resize and reencode without losing quality -- you can't. But to do it I would use VirtualDub and the Xvid codec. Set Xvid to single pass target quantizer mode with a quantizer of 2 to 3.

1. Creative Zen Vision W (but its irrelevant because I still want my video file to truly be 16:9)

It's not irrelevant because resizing and reencoding will cause a loss of quality. You could upscale your 640x480 source to ~848x480 -- but you'll probably find your player can't play videos over 720 pixels wide. You could scale to ~704x400 but that will lose ~17 percent of the vertical resolution. Or you could scale to ~640x360 and lose 25 percent of the vertical resoltuion. In all cases you'll lose quality from a second round of Xvid compression.

2. The original video is 4:3 (640x480). I have used all of the 16:9 options available
3. No

If MediaInfo doesn't show a change in the DAR you did something wrong, the file wasn't updated with the new flags. GSpot is better at showing PAR/DAR of AVI files.