PAL to NTSC question

[hockey2112]

I have a PAL SVCD of Office Space. The aspect ratio seems to be widescreen, but it is stretched vertically when I watch it on my computer (I haven't burned it for standalone DVD player playback yet). My question is, how do I squeeze the picture back down to a normal-looking widescreen aspect ratio, so that it looks normal when I play it on my TV? I tried converting it to NTSC with TMPGEnc, but that didn't do anything to correct the aspect ratio. I should probably be doing something different, but I don't know what. Can anyone help? Thanks!

[banjazzer]

If you are watching SVCD with Media Player, it doesn't always show the aspect ratio correctly. Check with something like PowerDVD, or a standalone player before altering it.

[hockey2112]

I checked the film with WinDVD. The aspect ratio is as described above.

[banjazzer]

In which case you have 2 options. You can either view it on your PC and adjust the playback resolution until it is correct. Or you can recode it, which will result in a slight drop in quality. If the source is high quality, then the results should be satisfactory, but it might be an idea to recode to VCD (there's a guide over to the left).

If you want to go this route, then you still need to make some alterations when you recode to adjust the aspect ratio. We can sort this out if this is your preferred option.

I experimented once with one of these bloatware packages, (made by Roxio, I think) This worked OK for some material, but a widescreen movie I tried came out the way you describe. Which is why TMPG is overwhelmingly preferable to the offerings of Roxio, MGI and Ulead as an encoder IMO.

[hockey2112]

I would like to recode it and adjust the aspect ratio, as I will be watching this on my TV. But is there a way to keep it at full quality? Can I just recode it to a new SVCD instead of dropping it to VCD? If not, then I will probably cut off a piece of it to recode, and see how the results come out. But I would like to know how to fix the aspect ratio, so please teach away.

[banjazzer]

Yes you can recode to SVCD. I am not sure what you mean by "The aspect ratio seems to be widescreen" because this seems to be at odds with " it is stretched vertically when I watch it on my computer". You can certainly alter the aspect ratio, but from what you have said I don't know which way we should be altering it!

It might be an idea to burn the SVCD as is using a CDRW to see how that looks before going any further.

[hockey2112]

Yes you can recode to SVCD. I am not sure what you mean by "The aspect ratio seems to be widescreen" because this seems to be at odds with " it is stretched vertically when I watch it on my computer". You can certainly alter the aspect ratio, but from what you have said I don't know which way we should be altering it!

It might be an idea to burn the SVCD as is using a CDRW to see how that looks before going any further.

The movie is an SVCD. I watched it on my computer, and the picture was stretched vertically... people's heads were too tall, etc. I resized the WinDVD window (by dragging the top of the screen a little bit towards the middle of the screen, without adjusting the picture horizontally) so that the picture appeared to be normal, and at that point it looked like it was a standard widescreen movie: there was plenty of blank space above and below the picture (where black bars would be on a TV screen), and all of the people's heads looked normal. I would like to be able to re-encode or otherwise edit this movie so that it will look right on my TV, and the picture will not be stretched. So I need to know a way to permanently change the way that the picture looks to how it looked when I adjusted the WinDVD window, preferably retaining its high SVCD quality.

[banjazzer]

OK. I would still employ a rewritable, and try encoding a few samples, (including the unchanged mpeg!) using TMPG's source range setting. Restoring aspect ratio is a hit-and-miss affair. 8)

You then need to set source aspect ratio 1:1(VGA) and Video arrange method Center (custom size). Here you will need to experiment. If the picture is stretched vertically you need to start with something like 480x560 for the center(custom size) setting, and keep reducing the second measurement by units of 16, until you get an acceptable result.