encoding an mpg for widescreen

[TDawg225]

anyone out there know how to take a normal .avi file and encode it into mpg, but when it is encoded, have it in widescreen? i want it in widescreen so i can get better quality. i can't use svcd or xvcd cause my DVD player won't play it. i need some way of creating widescreen or better encoding for normal vcd

[Greg12]

I dunno, i think widescreen isn't ready for mainstream.

Only like 2% have widescreen tvs

[TDawg225]

no. i don't have a widescreen tv. i just want it so it is like a DVD. You know, letterbox widescreen?

[Jeff Muller]

I have a 4x3 TV set, but it automatically switches to 16x9 mode for optimum resolution for widescreen movies. I'd love to know if it's possible to encode VCDs and SVCDs for 16x9 playback: and I mean "true" 16x9, not just adding black bars on top and bottom to fill in the rest of the screen.

Jeff

[Chopper Face]

Is MPEG smart enough to ignore the bars to a certain extent? I mean if you just shove those blacks bars up there will the compression algorithm be smart enough to know that there's no movement up there and put more effort into making the actual moving part of the screen cleaner or it always just spread out among the screen evenly?

[kriskim]

jeff,

svcd mpg2s can definitely use true 16:9 playback, as in 480x480/576 res with 16:9 pixel ratio. if you're using tmpgenc, there's an option in the video tab for Aspect Ratio. if you have CCE, there's also a pixel ratio option.
this can be done with VCD mpg1 as well, but i'm not sure if it can tell the tv to display it 16:9. a lot of widescreen telecines that are released have incorrect aspect ratios (mpg1s) and when changing the ratio, i can get them to play properly widescreen in powerDVD, but never tried to see if it played properly on my dvd player.

but definitely, svcds can properly tell the dvd player to play 16:9.

[vanillabox]

When I do rips of DVDs I only encode it to widescreen (meaning adding the black bars) for vcd. What you want to do is make sure that the setting in TMPGEnc are set to encode in the standard format, in my case 4x3 NTSC, and then I set the source aspect ratio at 16x9 and set the image positioning method to fit to frame (preserve aspect ratio).
hope this helps

[ktnwin]

Wide screen encoding to MPEG: IMHO, this only applies to movies that have aspect ratio of 16:9. For this, method for encoding wide screen MPEG does exist and should be used to view the VCD as wide screen on a 4:3 TV. Otherwise, the picture will be streched vertically and people look thin and tall.

However, if the movie has 4:3 aspect ratio to begin with, encoding it to wide screen only make people look fatter with no apparent gain in quality. This is what a wide screen TV set does to normal TV program at full screen, everyone look fat !!!. This is why these TV have a mode to add black borders on the left and right to shrink back to 4:3 ratio.

[Schmuck Optiks]

What you guys are talking about is anamorphic, which means that when the signal is recorded, the black bars that appear in the top when viewed through a regular 4x3 television are not present in the signal, in contrast to letterbox (common with some older dvds and laserdiscs) in which the actual recorded signal contains the black bars in the top and bottom. SVCDs and VCDs do not have anamorphic capabilities (otherwise not enhanced for widescreen viewing). What will happen if you have widescreen is that you will have black bars on all 4 corners, thus loosing resolution. Your best bet, if you have a widescreen television in buy an ANAMORPHIC not Letterbox DVD, because with anamorphic and widescreen, it will fill the whole screen, no black bars (if aspect ration is 1.85). If it is 2.35 you will still have black bars top and bottom, but not as much as regular 4x3 tv. For example, the first release of DIE HARD was in letterbox, the new 5 star collection is anamorphic. I would definetly go for anamorphic, and if the movie is letterbox (there are some good titles which you would be surprised that are letterbox e.g. the criterion release of armageddon !!!) probably they will release an anamorphic version so they can rob you of your hard eared dollars. Its all a SCAM,so you got to know what to look for

[ktnwin]

Agreed, this should be called anamorphic. They are encoded fully as 720x480 but when playing , the player add the black borders on top and bottom.

The Sony Digital D8 camcorder also has this mode (if enabled). It will record at full 720x480 but plays back at 16:9 aspect ratio (anamorphic video). If I copy this DV tape directly to a VCR for play back, the VCR will play stretched picture (everyone look tall and thin) because VCR player don't squeeze vertically and add black borders, not good.

When encode to VCD with TMPGEnc, TMPEnc will squeeze the picture then add black borders. So when this VCD is played back, it has the proper aspect ratio (16:9)

I believed I really understand this matter now, inclding playback on true wide screen TV (after making a few bad VCD with anamorphic DVD).

In summary, with anamorphic DVD

1) VCD with black borders , 4:3 TV -> play with black borders (top and bottom) to have correct aspect ratio

2) same VCD with wide screen TV -> play with borders all around (TF set to narrow screen mode). If TV use wide screen mode then everybody look fat.

3) VCD without black borders, 4:3 TV -> everybody look thin

4) same VCD with wide screen TV -> play full screen and has perfect aspect ratio.

I am trying to draw some pictures to illustrate this.

[Rescator]

Ok here's the trick to making a 720x480 (NTSC MPEG2/DVD/CAPTURE) into a anamorphic 352x240 (NTSC) VCD with TMPGEnc!!!

The same technique should work just fine with 720x576 PAL to 352x288 PAL VCD as well.

In my example (which I'm about to set for converting in the next few (yawn) hours) I'm using Dune (letterboxed 2.35 aspect)...

Click the "settings" button, choose "advanced settings".
Then doubleclick the "Clip Frame" option.
Firs click the "Arrange Setting" button.
Set "Arrange Mehod" to "Full Screen" (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT)
Then go back again to the "Clip Frame Setting".
This is where it gets a bit more tricky.

What is 480/1.3333333333333 ? Well it's 360...

(oh! btw. 1.33333333333 Is the 4:3 TV aspect ratio)
(anamorphic is 1.3333333 times "taller" than non-anamorphic.)
(well that's not true really. when they make anamorphic movies they SQUEEZE the width by 1.333333333 actually,
but we have to do it this way, I'll explain this a bit more later)

So we have to clip out 480-360 which is 120 vertical pixels (horizontal lines).
And 120/2=60
So crop/clip out 60 (lines) from the "Top" and 60 from the "Bottom". And leave the all the masks OFF please

You may have to clip/crop at an uneven size tough.
I discoverd that Dune had it's 2.35 letterboxed image 3 lines to low, so I had to clip Top=57 and Bottom=63.
(I cropped away all the black to check this btw, then I back stepped until the crop value was 57 and 63)
Now I checked the preview, there was still small black bars
since the image is 2.35, that's normal folks
But they where a lot thinner than before, not only that everything seemed thin (streched) horsefaced people etc. lol. This is also normal. Just like anamorphic should be (when applied to 2.35 letterbox)

If it was 1.78/1.80 letterbox (16:9) instead. Then there should be no black bars at all or at worst 1 or 2 lines at the top/bottom (or a little more if it's 1.67 or sumpt, your mileage may vary).

Luckily I have a GeforceMX gfx card with a TV out, and a 4:3 TV set with 16:9/anamorphic support right beside my PC.
So I was able to verify the preview in the TV set's anamorphic/16:9 mode.

Now just create your MPEG1 clip as usual.

And what is the point of this?
Well, converting from DVD/MPEG2/CAPTURE at 720x480 to VCD at 352x240 obviously loose some quality. 50% to be exact.
You loose 25% by going from 720 to 352 in width, and another 25% by going from 480 to 240 in height.

So I tought that, damn there must be a way to turn this into an anamorphic VCD. (note, your TV set will have to be switched to 16:9/anamorphic manually, I do this via a 16:9 aspect button on the TV remote)
and regain some quality that would otherwise be lost.

Remember that math I did earlier? 480 was the original height, 240 would have been the VCD height. But since we create a anamorphic VCD out of a letterboxed video we can dump a large portion of the black area. So that the 480 height original is turned into a 360 height original.

Confused? Well here's the explanation...

You loose a lot less quality going from 360>240 that you would when going from 480>240.
480>240 is a 50% reduction in height resolution, while 360>240 is only a 25% reduction in height quality!
So you gain, or more correctly put, you AVOID loosing more quality than usually. The down side is that you must have a TV set, or a VCD/SVCD/DVD player with a manual 16:9/anamorphic option.

As I said I'm about to let TMPGEnc start the converting, I'll then burn it and test it on my standalone DVD player. That the real test, to see if the aspect ratio is kept.
I'll post again and let you know if it all worked out ok on the standalone. (both my standalone DVD and the matching (true 16:9) Widescreen TV also support NTSC (i live in Europe btw) and I have the original Dune to compare against.
So if this works I would appreciate this being added to vcdhelp's FAQ/Guide sections.

oh and if the origial is already in 16:9 anamorphic (I haven't double checked this yet, I will later with my Bladerunner DVD so...

But you don't need any clipping/cropping then, just set the input to 16:9 (PAL/NTSC) and make sure you set arrange method to Full screen! (can someone veryfy this please? There will be some hours (yawn) before I'm able to test that... ;D

Regards...

[Rescator]

Hohohoh! It worked like a charm!
I compared it with the orioginal DVD Dune, and for fun a original VHS tape of Three Kings. Let's just say the qualitywise it was on-par with the VHS.
There was a few glitches in the image tough. But I guess that can be fixed by finetuing the settings in TMPGEnc.
(a few shots where the camera panned left/right seem to have given TMPGEnc some headache, if anyone have any tips I'd appreciate it)

All in all, I'm very satisfied with the result. The anamorphic VCD when compared to the letterboxed DVD match each other perfectly. (My TV has a zoom function for such letterboxed movies And the aspect was dead on. So know you all know how to make anamorhpic VCD's out of letterboxed DVD/MPEG2/CAPTURE wohoo And I dare to say the qualitywise one should be able to get it to SVHS or lowqual DVD/SVCD levels. The whole encoding with TMPGEnc only took 4 hours plus 30-45 minutes on an AMD Duron 750MHz clocked at 1000MHz, and it didn't even run warm, lol

The sound was great too no probbs. You may have to fiddle with the quality settins, but it seems people must always do it depending on what footage they re-/encode.
The reason I post this long after my previous post is that I had to struggle to find the right software.
Smartripper, DVD2AVI, YMPGEnc, VCDImager, cdrdao.
These was the utilitiez I used. Result? Well....
720x480 Letterboxed DVD turned into 352x240 anamoprhic VCD

(This post and the previous post is now considered publicdomain, and parts or all of it may be used on this site or on FAQ's/Guides provided the information is used to benefit vcdhelp.com visitors

Regards...