How can i change the aspect ratio to fit the entire screen?

[autoexit]

Hi everyone,

Sorry if this is the wrong place, but the topic heading says video conversion.

Anyway i have really old dvd's that use 4.3 as the aspect ratio and when playing using media player classic or windows media player, the picture is obviously cut at the sides.

I have seen some videos on youtube that have smaller frame resolution dimensions , but when playing the video is fully stretched out to fit the entire screen without looking funny.


At the moment i am using anydvd hd to rip the videos and use handbrake to convert them to mkv.

Can somebody please help me because i want to rip and convert my old dvd's to mp4 or mkv and be able to watch those videos at full screen.

What programs do i need and how do i do it?

Thank you.

[jagabo]

You can't fit a 4:3 video to a 16:9 screen without distorting the picture or cropping off the top and bottom of the frame.

[autoexit]

You can't fit a 4:3 video to a 16:9 screen without distorting the picture or cropping off the top and bottom of the frame.

Can you please show me how to properly crop off the top and bottom?

Is there a general rule to knowing what value to put in or any guides?

[Budman1]

You know cropping top and bottom means their heads and legs, right?

[manono]

Yep, give up this very bad idea. YouTube is full of videos where the uploader either stretched them to fill the wide screen, making everyone fat, or cut off the tops and bottoms. They are made by people that either don't know any better (ignorant) or do it on purpose (stupid). Don't become one of them. There's nothing wrong with having black bars on the sides of a 4:3 video. Concentrate on learning how to encode properly and at the original aspect ratio.

[roma_turok]

Not good idea converting 4x3 to 16x9
but you can simulate this in VLC

when video is playing in VLC
crop image to 16x9: select Video -> Crop -> 16:9
or resize image to 16x9: select Video -> Aspect Ratio -> 16:9

[jagabo]

Most players have options that let you zoom/crop/stretch. Except Windows Media Player, of course.

[WBFAir]

Yeah I can tell you at least for me as I was actually looking for the opposite, where for me I was looking to take Blu-Rays and make them fill up a 4:3 CRT-TV better.

But all in all I was hoping not to loose any of the pixel count, (not that it really mattered, but hey I paid for it).

Anyway, what I finally found was I cropped 200 points on each side from the width, and it did help some.

But for sure I lost some of the picture too.

So like others said, is going to be the way.

But really what I wanted to reply was...as I have been doing a lot of older 4:3 DVD's to play on my LED TV, like many of these have, my TV has a aspect adjustment that I programmed the switching of into the remote.

So essentially I do the recode just as it is with using Loose and anamorphic 2, an this produces the 4:3 aspect as would be suspected, which all in all kinda works nice for my CRT-TV's. But then on the LED, I just stretch it with the option on the TV and for some reason, it actually normally doesn't look that bad. An having it in the remote makes it pretty easy to switch this around.

It does chop a tiny bit off the top an bottom, but oddly at least for my eyes and TV, the picture doesn't look stretched.

Anyway, don't know if that is possible or will work for you, but is how I kinda get around the problem.

[jagabo]

To make the picture from a 4:3 PAL DVD fit a 16:9 screen crop 72 lines off the top of the frame, 72 lines off the bottom of the frame (or crop unevenly but always a total of 144 lines, leaving 432 lines) then resize what's left (or use PAR/DAR flags) to a 16:9 frame size.

To make the picture from a 16:9 PAL DVD fit a 4:3 screen, crop 90 columns off the left and right (or crop unevenly, a total of 180 columns, leaving 540 colums) and resize (or use PAR/DAR flags) to a 4:3 frame size.

[hello_hello]

Anyway i have really old dvd's that use 4.3 as the aspect ratio and when playing using media player classic or windows media player, the picture is obviously cut at the sides.

I tend to encode 4:3 video using it's original 4:3 aspect ratio and effectively crop and zoom on playback.
If you're using MPC-HC for playback, the 9 key on the numeric keypad zooms in. Just keep tapping 9 until the video fills the 16:9 screen.
From there I use Ctrl+2 (numeric keypad) to slide the picture down so I'm not watching video with people's heads cut off. Ten taps on the 2 key is usually about right. I can watch 4:3 video on a 16:9 screen that way and often completely forget it's really 4:3. That method won't distort the picture at all.
For the record, the 5 key on the numeric keypad resets pan and scan back to default.

[autoexit]

thanks a lot guys...

it made things much clear, i guess it makes sense since old sports videos converted to bluray always have the edges in black.

anyway the video i was referring to is this video it has 360p resolution but when playing it in media player it plays in full screen without looking funny on my 22''.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL84Yg2dNsg



anyway the old videos i was trying to play in media was the transformers generation.


anyway thanks a lot

[jagabo]

The size of the frame doesn't directly determine whether the video fits the screen or not. A 16 pixel by 9 pixel video can be enlarged to fit a full 1920x1080 screen. A 16,000,000x9,000,000 video can be shrunken to fill the screen (if you could find a computer that could decompress and scale fast enough!). Even the relative dimension of the frame don't necessarily determine whether or not the video fits the screen. Any frame size can hold any display aspect ratio by specifying the display aspect ratio or the aspect ratio of individual pixels. For example, NTSC DVD uses a 720x480 frame size for both 16:9 and 4:3 movies. But 720x480 is neither 16:9 nor 4:3. It's 3:2.

The real issue is that you can't fit a square peg in a round hole. Or a squarish peg into a much more rectangular hole (or vice versa) without cutting off parts of the peg or squishing/stretching it.

[Christmas]

using Media Player Classic MPC: go into the Pan & Scan section, edit and create a new preset, set the zoom to 1.11 (or thereabouts if you want to mess around with it e.g. 1.105)
that will give you the same effect as VLC's crop to 16:9 option