Aspect Ratios

[cuprasteve]

Hi, not sure if this is in the correct place but here is my question.

I am trying to take backups of my DVD's to AVIs mainly to store on my media centre.

Now most of my DVDs are 2.35 anamorphic, and somehow the dvd software resizes this to fit on the screen yet still retain the width of the movie.

Now when I convert it to avi i get it obviously in 2.35:1 ratio, which leave thick black bars top and bottom. Now to get them to fit on my widescreen TV i am simply cropping the edges to give them a 16:9 ratio which is fine and dandy, my question is, is this the only way to work with avi's to get them to fit the screen as I am losing some of the edges of the film?

If it really is the only way then I will just keep doing it like that but I had to set my mind at rest that there was nothing else I could to to get the film to fill the screen yet still retain all the footage andwithout the people getting squished etc

thank you

steve

[cuprasteve]

i thought this would be a relatively straight forward question on this forum, it seems not many people know the answer :lol:

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hello and welcome to the forum,

I sense a bit of impatience. Please re-acquaint yourself with the forums rules and try punching the word "anamorphic" into the forums search engine!

[CWR03]

Now when I convert it to avi i get it obviously in 2.35:1 ratio, which leave thick black bars top and bottom. Now to get them to fit on my widescreen TV i am simply cropping the edges to give them a 16:9 ratio which is fine and dandy, my question is, is this the only way to work with avi's to get them to fit the screen as I am losing some of the edges of the film?
The only other option would be to stretch the image height to fill the screen.

[MrTroy]

but I had to set my mind at rest that there was nothing else I could to to get the film to fill the screen yet still retain all the footage andwithout the people getting squished etcWell, some of the more expensive widescreen tv's have software to stretch 4:3 to 16:9 "intelligently". That is, less eventful areas of the screen get stretched more than where the action is, making the stretching a lot less visible. In reality it's mostly the center of the screen that gets stretched little and the edges more.

Maybe there's some PC software that can do the same for 2.35:1 to 16:9?

[cuprasteve]

The only other option would be to stretch the image height to fill the screen.


does this mean the image would appear out of proportion?

[Kika]

In reality it's mostly the center of the screen that gets stretched little and the edges more.

Yes, and this look absolutly terrible on horizontal pannings...

[jggimi]

does this mean the image would appear out of proportion?Absolutely.

You've discovered that filmmakers will often choose photographic and projection systems designed for theatrical use, rather than your TV. You have several choices:

Live with letterboxing for films that are wider than 16:9, just as you do with a DVD disc in a standalone player connected to your 16:9 TV today. We've never done a poll of the membership, but I'd bet the vast majority of our members prefer this method.

Alter the image in one way or another. All are compromises. You can eliminate some of the image, via crop or zoom methods, as you're doing today ... to produce a 16:9 fullscreen image. You can distort the complete image, in a variety of methods, some of which were described here.

Depending on the capabilities of your 16:9 TV/monitor, some of these might be done by the monitor itself, such as "zoom" to crop away image and letterboxing, or "justified" or "normalized" (or whatever your brand uses to describe this technique that MrTroy described).

Lastly, you can wait for a 2.35:1 monitor from a manufacturer, or see the link at the bottom of this thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=110185

But ... what will you do with the 2.5:1 or 3:1 widescreen films? 2.25:1?

[manono]

it seems not many people know the answer :lol:

It seems no one wants to help you ruin your movies.

[MrTroy]

Well, some of the more expensive widescreen tv's have software to stretch 4:3 to 16:9 "intelligently". That is, less eventful areas of the screen get stretched more than where the action is, making the stretching a lot less visible. In reality it's mostly the center of the screen that gets stretched little and the edges more.

Maybe there's some PC software that can do the same for 2.35:1 to 16:9?I just realized there actually is software that can do this: WarpedResize, an AviSynth filter.
Can be downloaded here (www.trbarry.com/SimpleResize.zip), description here (www.trbarry.com/Readme_SimpleResize.txt).

You first have to crop all black bars off your 2.35:1 video and then use something like
WarpedResize(720,405,hWarp,vWarp)

For hWarp and vWarp values consult the description.

[mod]

It seems no one wants to help you ruin your movies.

. :D