Question on Letterbox Borders

[greath]

I was interesting in knowing how the borders are encoded on a HD-DVD/Blu Ray and what would be the best method of encoding these borders when backing up using the x264 codec. I think it's best if I use an example as then it will make it easier, in case I get the terminology wrong.

If I have a 1920 x 1200 source with an aspect ration of 2.35:1 then the picture information will be 1920 x ( 1200 / 2.35 ) or 1920 x 817 pixels. Assuming that the codecs work 8x8 macroblocks then this can be considered as 1920 x 816.

So, what is best to pass to an encoder such as x264 - the 1920 x 1200 original source, or a 1920 x 1200 source cropped to 1920 x 816? The latter will be more efficient as the encoder will not have to use space for the top and bottom black bars, I would guess.

Can someone say also if I do crop the input to 1920 x 816, I assume it would play in VLC as that would scale the input to full-screen when displayed on a PC, but would this be compliant with HD-DVD specifications and play on a stand-alone or a 360?

[woah!]

to author to a dvd-rdl that plays on a hd-dvd player i needed to leave the borders in and encode at 1920x1080. ACA wouldnt take a cropped encode, it looks for a compliant size.

pity as that black does take up bitrate.

[greath]

That's what I suspected. That I could chop them off, but then it would only play on a PC and not be stand-alone player compatible. Thanks.

[musky5789]

try this avs to add borders to top and bottom of your encode, this works for me using x264.exe
DirectShowSource("D:\C.264",fps=23.98,framecount=166067,audio=false)
#deinterlace
#crop
BicubicResize(1920,1080,0,0.5) # Bicubic (Neutral)
#denoise
LetterBox(132,132)
#source=AssumeFPS(source,24000,1001)
ConvertToYV12()

1080-816=264/2= 132

132 is top and bottom of screen
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