mkv wont play full screen. change aspect ratio?

[elimelim]

Basically im trying to play an mkv movie on my television using the built in usb port. and everytime i play it, it plays with black bars top and bottom. there is no zoom function of the tv to stretch the picture so im trying to do it using software

i need some sort of software to stretch the picture out to too full screen. ive tried mkvmerge but it only changes the display height/width and i need to change the actual pixel height and width. i also tried changing the aspect ratio to 16:9 and 4:3 but it still plays with black bars

the current dimensions are 1280 x 544 on the mkv video.

[guns1inger]

The movie is wider than your TV. That is, the aspect ratio of the film is 2.35:1, while your TV is 1.778:1 (16:9). The video is not meant to fill the screen, and if you had actually purchased this video instead of downloading it, it still would not fill the screen. There are only two ways to make it fill the screen. The first is to resize it to 1280 x 720. This will make everyone appear stretched tall and thin and will look stupid. The other way is to zoom the image in an editor until it is 720 pixels tall, then crop off the ends so it is 1280 pixels wide. You will lose around 25% of the image.

Or you could just stop carrying on about black bars and watch the movie the way it was shot. A large proportion of widescreen movies are wider than 16:9 and will have black bars. Are you going to butcher every one of them ?

[elimelim]

well i bought a big tv for a reason, and thats to fill up the space, can you help me resize it too 1280 x 720?

i cant find any software to do this.

[guns1inger]

well i bought a big tv for a reason, and thats to fill up the space

You wasted your money. They aren't meant to fill the space.

Search the forums for cropping and widescreen and you will find plenty of posts. Most will tell you not to do it - aside from the butchery you will lose quality through resizing and re-encoding - but many will also tell you how to do it. If you really want to do this, you will have to work out the rest without me. I simply don't understand your problem.

[jagabo]

Just about every video editing program has the ability to resize and crop.

[elimelim]

yeah but it always asks me to covnert, all i want to do is change resolution without losing any big difference is quality

give me software names

[edDV]

yeah but it always asks me to covnert, all i want to do is change resolution without losing any big difference is quality

give me software names

Upsizing in software is always lossy and also requires a full decode-recode generation loss. Most HDTV sets have zoom functions that are less lossy since they are resizing in hardware. A 1280 x 544 source file needs to be upsized by your TV hardware to native display resolution (usually 1920x1080 or 1366x768).

[elimelim]

tell stupid samsung that.

they put the zoom feature on the newer models but cant be bothered to add it to my model. i could get one of them network streamers that plays files via usb and can stretch etc.. but im worndering if i could at least try the software method and see if it works

[johns0]

If you fill the screen so you dont see the black bars then you lose some of the picture from the sides.you can resize the picture to 1280x720 and fill the screen with avidemux and re-encode and lose some quality and you lose about 207 pixels per side.

[edDV]

If you fill the screen so you dont see the black bars then you lose some of the picture from the sides.you can resize the picture to 1280x720 and fill the screen with avidemux and re-encode and lose some quality and you lose about 207 pixels per side.

Sort of like going to the cinema and have them draw the curtains a quarter way.

[Caple]

Or watch a soccer game and don't see the goals

[elimelim]

If you fill the screen so you dont see the black bars then you lose some of the picture from the sides.you can resize the picture to 1280x720 and fill the screen with avidemux and re-encode and lose some quality and you lose about 207 pixels per side.

i cant find how to do this in the software

[jagabo]

AviDemux: Open file, select output file type and compression codec paramters, add Resize and Crop filters, Save.

[elimelim]

what video codec should i use to under video? im not sure which is the best format

[Caple]

Check the video with Gspot or Mediainfo to know what codec and bitrate was used.
Then use the same on your video.

[jagabo]

MPEG4 AVC/x264

[elimelim]

does it have to be re- encoded, isnt there a way without re encoding to change aspect ratio/resolution

[jagabo]

You can change the aspect ratio (just a pair of numbers that tell the player what shape the picture should be during playback) with MkvMerge. But you weren't happy with that. So your only choice is to resize, crop, and reencode. How many times do you have to be told this?