Cropping Videos is a Nightmare

[Muze Twelve]

1. The link you gave me, with the program's icon of a globe with a yellowish arrow wrapped around it? The same thing I bought from Staples in August thinking it was the real deal; the program AnyDVD that it copied its name from but was in fact a knock-off program. The icon for the AnyDVD I was looking for has a totally different icon.

2. I wonder if you take time to read thoroughly. Because this thread is about cropping a single scene. It's not about MM. I personally don't get the hate for MM, and I realize it's not the thousand plus dollar program that professionals use. I am not doing any of these music videos for profit and those are just for art's sake and what I've envisioned from those movies and the music I put to them. It's just my own personal thing.

3. I do not use MM to copy a movie to another disc. For that I use the programs that Baldrick introduced me to. Namely AVStoDVD. And for ripping a movie to use in MM (for music videos only) I have been using MakeMKV. But this topic is about cropping a scene. Which MM, MakeMKV or AVStoDVD does not do.

4. Converters. It depends on what one is using one for.

You asked me to create another topic about cropping, and this topic is about cropping. I only mentioned MM because I have a file in it that has the cropped and uncropped scenes. One which is good and one which is still not good.

I am leaving

I appreciate that as you haven't really helped. Your first lines in the thread was more or less to make me feel bad for manono's help. And as I've said, I never told him to post anything or say anything. He just does and I try to explain my situation and if he has a link or something, he usually just tells me what it is and what it does. He doesn't like music videos set to movies. He doesn't do what I do and has said as much. To him this kind of stuff is just not something he would want to do.

[Muze Twelve]

So the guy at the Office Depot said that at one time they did sell the Vegas Pro software, but I just got the feeling that he was thinking of something else entirely. I told him it cropped videos so you could remove those black bars and he thought I was talking about shuttering within the actual film footage. And I was like, no, the black bars on the sides. So I'm not sure Office Depot actually sold any Vegas Pro items.

I did find that the main B&C movie I have on file is 720 x 480 and so the deleted scene should match right up, since it shows it being the same. I don't get it either. I told the guy at Office Depot that it's a software that helps with an already finished video or clips of videos and I told him I was using MM and he said there was something in MM that shrinks the frames. I don't even know what he meant by that. Shrinking frames? I wondered if he meant cropping or something else. Very weird.

[smrpix]

You're making this way too complicated.

First, Office Depot does sell Vegas Pro through their website -- but so what?

On your B&C DVD you have the main movie which is encoded 720x480 with a 16:9 aspect ratio and bonus scenes which are encoded 720x480 with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Yes they are the same pixel dimensions, but they are flagged to display differently.

If you're trying to combine them you must zoom in to match the 16:9. This will result in the loss of the top and bottom of the frame -- information the filmmakers assumed would be lost in normal theatrical screening.

You can do this in any of the Vegas products, apparently you can do it in MM (which few of us use because it is very limited.)

[Muze Twelve]

Okay so Office Depot would be able to order this software to be shipped to them? I had gotten the impression from the guy that it wasn't possible to do this anymore but that there were possible extra packages in the warehouses and that they might still have a copy here and there. Honestly he thought I was referring to black bars within the picture itself, like a shutter effect or something.

the loss of the top and bottom of the frame

Except that right now, and I swear by it that I have the second scene (the one where Bonnie is turning away from a mirror) in full with no loss of the top or the bottom or any side that is fitting right in with the main movie. And that second scene is from the deleted scenes on the Special Features disc. I really don't know how that happened, how I did that or what exactly what steps made that happen...but it is exactly like I describe it.

I can upload the scene, and another youtube video calling it re-re-edit and show you. It's really something. I hope to have some time this weekend and I can do this.

[Muze Twelve]

Oh boy, well the Office Depot has gotten back in touch with me and told me that they don't carry the Vegas Pro software anymore, or they don't have it currently in stock. I did look at their website and nothing came up. I looked in Staples again, nothing there. But I'm wary of Staples since the other software I got from there wasn't what I thought it was. Then I looked on Walmart's site. They had it but it was 500$ in that price range. Way too expensive for me.

I took another look at my files with the deleted scenes and the scene that goes well is width 1440 height 1080 so that might be why it's showing no crops of the top/bottom but no black bars. Anyway this is something I'll have to really find time for it to figure out what the trick was. It could have been Vegas Pro that produced those reselts because back in August I did have Vegas Pro 11 installed for like two or three weeks. Then I tried another version and uninstalled it because I didn't want time to run out before I had a chance to do something with it.

I really wish I had more time to do this and work's been absolutely crazy. I have been so tired in the last couple of weeks that I haven't even tried to do any video stuff.

[Muze Twelve]

Okay so this thing has me stumped. I really don't know what I did to get it to work for one scene and not the other. My guess is that it was via the trial Vegas Pro that I was using back in August. As I really don't want to upload a whole other video of the same thing just to show the one scene, suffice it to be that I'll just revisit the Vegas Pro trial thing and make notes of all that I do. Step by step. Even though I was following steps, but this time write down what exactly all I did.

Another thing I wanted to know is if there's *any* way to get an ISO file to translate as a readable video file so I can test it in MM.

Also, another sorta off topic question; does anyone have PictureIt 9 from Microsoft? For windows XP? Someone who had it, had their HD tweaked by a repair guy and he lost their program somehow.