Converting Pillaboxed SD AVC HD Files to DVD Compliant Widescreen

[Tom Saurus]

Since I have not very many HD Channels to choose from, I sometimes tune to a SD Channel to record something. Now the Hauppauge HD PVR records a widescreen show with black bars surrounding the video on all sides. I use VideoReDo to edit out parts of the video and export out the file with the pillabox intact to avoid recoding. I can get the file I want using VideoReDo to go to the DVD Specs. It can achieve the cropping necessary to make it a 16:9 720 x 480 file suitable for dropping into TDA 3; the problem is that I can't adjust the audio down to a smaller file size and thus my video quality is comprimised. I can adjust the audio is I chose mp2 audio. But I thought that would mean re-encoding the audio and then re-encoding it back to ac3 again when making a DVD.

I can drop the 1920 x 1080 file in Tmpgenc Express 4.0 and it gives quite a good quality encode to the DVD specs. The only problem is that ignores the the picture cropping I have done to remove the black bars on the side. I think I have found the solution though. Bare in mind I used the picture resize filter as well and chose 720 x 480. It turns out I have to select Display Ratio 4:3 in the format specs. I have the encoding happening right now, though I did test it in the Preview mode and it looked the way I wanted it to.

I want to end up with a DVD Compliant mpeg2 file that I can just drop into TDA 3.0. I will post later how it all turned out. The cropping in the event you are curious is to cut 240 pixels off each side. One can also cut 242 off one side and 238 off the other side.

[Tom Saurus]

Well it turned out pretty good. My file was 1 hour and 27 minutes long and I ended up with a DVD compliant mpeg2 file. The file is 4.2 gb in size.

[sanlyn]

Convert the audio to uncompressed PCM saved as .wav to prevent turning it to garbage with lossy mp2. Then crop/size video without audio, rejoin audio to video in TMPGenc and let TMPGenc convert PCM to AC3 with much less quality loss.

[jagabo]

Since I have not very many HD Channels to choose from, I sometimes tune to a SD Channel to record something. Now the Hauppauge HD PVR records a widescreen show with black bars surrounding the video on all sides.

The HD PVR only records what it is given. It's your cable box (?) that's putting the 4:3 SD picture in a 16:9 HD frame with pillarboxing, and the broadcaster that's putting an HD source in a 4:3 SD frame with letterboxing. You could just set your cable box to output sources in their original format. Then the HD PVR would capture an SD video, ready for conversion to MPEG 2. Of course, the picture will still be letterboxed in a 4:3 frame.

[Tom Saurus]

sanlyn: Thank you for that advice.

jagabo: Thank you for your advice. I do think I have some settings in my satellite receiver that will allow me to do as you suggested. I just checked my settings on my satellite receiver 16:9 is checked. I also have the option of 4:3 widescreen and 4:3. There is also other options for 4:4 over ride but they are selected as Off.

Well anyway I dropped the file into TDA 3.0 and chose a 16:9 menu. I played the DVD and watched some of it on my Mom's 20 inch 480p HDTV. The menu fills the entire screen when I chose the full option on the TV display. The video itself has a black bar at the top and bottom but nothing on the sides. If I chose the Natural mode on the TV display I have widescreen inside the black bars on the side. The file turned out pretty good. An added bonus in making the DVD, VideoReDo gave me a text file with chapter information. The chapters were at the cut points in the original AVC HD file. I looked at that information when I looked at the .mpeg2 file in TDA 3.0. I was able to do a little finer editing at each of those cut points and I ended up with chapters in the DVD at these points.

It is rather rare for me to trouble myself by making an actual DVD these days. I usually just convert to .divx or .mkv files. It is probably good to make a DVD every once and while to keep one's skills at doing so.

[Tom Saurus]

Last night the Hauppauge HD PVR was on a SD channel and the show was widescreen. The Hauppauge HD PVR recorded it as 1920 x 1080i. I edited the video in VideoReDo exporting it at the same dimensions. I dropped this into Vidcoder. I went for auto cropping, keep aspect ratio and chose 720 as my width. I ended up with a file that was 720 x 414 with 16:9 aspect ratio. The file looked pretty good when I played it on the LG Blu Ray player. This is a significant leap forward for me. What I have been doing prior to this is recording SD video on my Hauppauge 150 on the Windows XP machine. It would record it as 720x480 mpeg2 video at 8000kbs. I would then edit the video and drop it into vidcoder and then convert to a .mkv file, depending on the video, I would use, 750kbs or 1000kbs, 1500kbs or 1800kbs. I would say that the Hauppauge HD PVR recording was superior to my usual way of recording SD video. I will have to experiment with 4:3 dimension files and see what can be achieved there. Also on the Hauppauge HD PVR recording when converting, I set the audio for pass through.