1080i video containing 4:3 material stretched to 16:9

[tom1649]

I have a 1080x1920 AVCHD video that contains 4:3 footage stretched to 16:9. What I want to do is to find a way of squeezing the video back to 4:3 with minimal loss of quality. Would it be possible to pillarbox it?

[newpball]

I have a 1080x1920 AVCHD video that contains 4:3 footage stretched to 16:9. What I want to do is to find a way of squeezing the video back to 4:3 with minimal loss of quality. Would it be possible to pillarbox it?

Are you sure your PAR is not automatically solving this?

If not, then with minimal loss you would simply override the aspect ratio in your media player or find a way to patch the PAR in the video file.

[jagabo]

Remux it with a 4:3 DAR flag at the container level. Most players will respect that and there will be no loss of quality.

[tom1649]

I managed to change the aspect ratio using Yamb. Media players such as VLC and WMP now play the file as 4:3. However when I play the file using the USB slot in my TV it still plays as 16:9. Also when I load the new file into AVIdemux for editing it is still 16:9.

What I really want to do is to ensure the file will play back as 4:3 wherever I use it.

[jagabo]

Then change the frame size to 4:3 and reencode. But even that may not work universally, some players/device stretch everything to full screen.

[tom1649]

I think I'll just recapture the satellite feed at 576i rather than upscaled 1080i. At least 576i can be switched between 16:9 and 4:3 easily. The only reason I was using 1080 was because the satellite receiver does a good job of upscaling SD 576i to 1080i. Unfortunately the receiver won't pillarbox a horizontally stretched feed to 4:3.