Black border larger in SVCD than DVD

[Baylien]

:cool:
G'day,

As a newbie newbie I hope I'm not asking an extremely dumb question. I have converted my first DVD to SVCD last night and I must say I am very impressed with the results. Video and sound are excellent. A 120 minute DVD with 4 pass in 10 hours. Not bad I think.

The original DVD which is in 16:9 when played on my DVD player on a 80 cm 4:3 TV has a black border of approx. 2 inches (5 cm) top and bottom but my SVCD version has a black border of approx. 4 inches (10cm) top and bottom. Is this normal? Is there something I can tweak to give me back the correct perspective? I have searched the net and the FAQs and forums but I cannot find any hit for my particular question.

Thanks,

[Kedirekin]

Sounds like you might have a 4:3 DVD that uses black borders encoded onto the DVD to achieve a playback aspect of 16:9. DVD2SVCD must have been set to 16:9, which caused it to add black borders in addition to the ones on the DVD.

If that is the case, you'll have to re-encode the movie with DVD2SVCD set to 4:3.

[markrb]

If the DVD is anamorphic or says enhanced for widescreen tv's use 16 x 9.
If the DVD just says letterbox and is an older DVD try 4:3.

If I do Dawn of the Dead which is a letterbox movie I get exactly what you said. I need to encode that as 4:3.

Do a test chapter at 4:3 and see if that helps. Use a CDRW disk so you can try it without wasting a disc.

Mark

[mrbass]

in Newbie Reference it says
"Aspect ratio It reads the vob files to determine either 4:3 letterbox or 16:9 widescreen. Usually it's correct but best to verify with amazon.com/dvd just to be safe"

Just to clarify if it says widescreen letterbox use 4:3. If it says letterbox always use 4:3.

[Baylien]

G'day,

Thanks for your replies. The DVD that I am trying to back up says on the back cover that the feature aspect ratio is 2.35:1 anamorphic. I assumed therefore that I would have to use 16:9 in DVD2SVCD. I will try doing a test chapter at 4:3 and let you know what happens.

Cheers,

[Baylien]

G'day,

I have converted 1 chapter using 4:3 instead of 16:9 and magnifico, back to the original DVD size.

Thanks for your help,

Cheers,

[segv]

I remember reading in some other thread that dvd2svcd has been optimised to play back on 4:3 ratio TV's therefore the aspect ratio combo is used to determine whether to add black borders to the encoded image. Essentially, if you select 4:3 then dvd2svcd will not add any black borders and conversely selecting 16:9 will cause dvd2svcd to add black borders top and bottom so that the 16:9 film has the correct ratio when displaying it on a 4:3 TV. Confused the hell out of me initially. Personally, I select 4:3 ratio for all my rips and then force the display ratio by selecting the mode on my TV.

Regards
segv