Letterboxing a VCD ...

[DaNx]

Hey
can someone tell me the easiest way to letterbox a VCD so i can get rid of the subtitles down the bottom and a time code stamp at the top of the screen.
basically making the VCD a widescreen .....

Thanks

[pyst]

I'm only guessing at a solution here. You might get lucky with a 'proven' or 'correct' method from someone else but in case no one else bothers, here goes...

How about cropping the top and bottom that you don't want to see and the second part is processed either one way or the other with Tmpgenc by....

Making the source 16:9 and the output 4:3 or the other way around
Source 4:3 and output 16:9.

As I said I don't know if that is a 'professional' solution but it worked for me and should work better for you with your expanded (height) cropped movie being flattened a bit.

[DEmberton]

There is a "Crop Frame" setting in TMPEng, which will give you a bit more control than just setting the aspect ratios.

Dave

[pyst]

Hmm... that's a better idea.

I forgot that I was wanting to change the aspect ratio without cropping the movie.

I remember now that I also tried to change the custom size to 352x200 to 'squish' the movie without cropping but my dvdplayer would still play it fullscreen. I think when I tried 350x200 that worked.

[kitty]

I agree that the crop frame in TMPGenc works well - I have used it successfully on some WMV to MPEG1 conversions