16:9 encoded to 4:3 with borders or 4:3->4:3 ??

[vortex72]

The default choice for aspect ratio is 16:9 encoded as 4:3.

I've simply kept this choice as is for quite some time since I've noticed no problems with my rips (using cce 2.5 or latest tmpeg). I was just wondering, what do these settings do and how does it change the look of the AR if I use the other setting? And which setting do I need to change to make my movies "cropped" if I dont wish to encode in widescreen and the dvd only has widescreen format?

thanks in advance for any assistance

[UltimateDBZ]

16:9 encoded as 4:3 is not the default, in fact there is no default. When you load an IFO, DVD2SVCD (attempts to) detect the proper format from the video you chose. If you want to see the effect of the other formats, just click the Go! button but click preview, and choose one or the other from in there. There is no reason to crop when both formats are available (there are actually 3, but the 3rd you can only see if you set DVD2SVCD's level to advanced).

[vortex72]

what setting do I need to use if I want to crop a widescreen dvd to full screen on tv set?

[UltimateDBZ]

Why would you want to do that? You'll either cut off parts of both sides, or stetch the video out vertically.. either way the output will suck.

[gerti67]

Hi vortex72,

see Q63 of the Q&A for this please.

@UltimateDBZ:

I personally tried it for some 2.35:1 movies and my 4:3 TV set and the result was very good, the information you loose from the sides is usually not that necessary for the movie plot and mostly they do this when showing widescreen movies on TV - at least they did here in Germany but seems it gets better now as 16:9 TV sets are quite common.

And you don't have to stretch the movie vertically as most DVDs come anamorphic these days and are already pre-stretched vertically to give more picture information to the users. ;)

But that's a different case when trying this on a 2.35:1 letterboxed movie then the output will really suffer - and I mentioned it also in the Q&A.

Hope this helps,
Gerti

[UltimateDBZ]

@gerti

I suppose there are those select instances when it would make sense, but as for everyday encoding.. it makes the most sense to encode in the same ratio that the source is encoded in.

[gerti67]

You're right,

and personally I leave the aspect ratio as it is (I only did it for testing purposes) but some people just don't like those big black borders on their 4:3 TV sets as they blank about 50% of the screen and they can live with a movie that looks like a 1.85:1 movie with less black borders and less information also. ;)

Greetings,
Gerti

[vortex72]

Yes, normally I do encode in the original widescreen. But, for some movies they look better in full screen and you dont really lose any critical information from the plot by losing a bit off the sides. I think studios are aware that a large majority of people still rent vcr tapes(dwindling now) and will be watching the movie on a cropped vcr tape or on network tv so they dont put any critical info on the edge of the screen.

I wanted to encode the movie Memento in fullscreen, but I still wasnt exactly clear on how to do this properly. I used the preview feature to see how the frames would look with the different available aspect ratios. All of them stretched the picture vertically and it looked distorted except for the dvd2svcd preselected option. I know I've done this with Tmpeg by choosing the "full screen" option, instead of "full screen keep aspect ratio" But I'm using CCE. Anyway, I'm encoding memento now with original aspect ratio. Only going at .68 since I'm using high image priority, noise filter and sharpening hehe.
Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[GregS]

Vortex
As Gerti suggested check out question # 63
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21859

I use this method for movies I want to watch on the 13" TV
at our camp in Maine .I use bicubic resize with good results .

Also do a search for "crop" on these boards . There's
quite alot on this subject.

Good luck , Greg p.s. feel free to e-mail me