Resizing a DivX video

[Phil McCavity]

I have a number of videos which I resized using DivX's crop option at the time of encoding.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I find it's a pain playing them back because I have to select a custom aspect ratio in zoomplayer.

How can I adjust my videos to put back the black bars and return them to the correct DVD aspect ratio without stretching the video or re-encoding?

Thanks

[setarip_old]

Hi!

I'm fairly certain that this cannot be accomplished without re-encoding.

One method would be as follows:

(In VirtualDub, set "Video" to "Full Processing Mode" and "Audio" to "Direct Stream Copy")

1) Load you video into VirtualDub
2) From the "Video" dropdown menu, click on "Filters", then click on the "Add" radio button and doubleclick on the "Resize" filter
3) Set "New width" and "New height" to the SAME resolution as your original .AVI (In this example, I'm assuming it's 720x480)
4) Put a checkmark in the box labelled "Expand frame and letterbox image - and enter a multiple of 16 in "Frame height" (Increasing the initial height by perhaps 208, or 192 to approximate 16:9 - which, in this example, will mean increasing the height from 480 to 688 or 672)
5) Click on "OK" to return to the "Filters" window

6) Once again, doubleclick on the "Resize" filter
7) Set "New height" to 480 (This will reduce the ENTIRE image, including the black bars to 480 pixels of vertical resolution). Click on "OK" until you get back to the main VirtualDub window
8) Save with a new filename

[unskinnyboy]

You can change the aspect ratio to any custom value, without reencoding using MPEG Modifier (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=78050).

[Phil McCavity]

Downloaded MPEGModifier - yet to try it though. Thanks for the advice!