Pad MPEG2 (add black bars) - How?

[Tiberiust]

I am making videos of family pictures for 'her who must be obeyed' to be viewed on our HTPC system which outputs thru modulated RF. She mostly views it from the 16:9 TV in the salon. Despite her favourite Sat program being broadcast in SD at 4:3, she insists on leaving the TV set to 16:9 to fill the screen, so we have fat people all over. Whatever...
My problem is that when she views the picture videos (which are 3:2, I don't crop them) the TV is still in 16:9 (she can't/won't change it to 'original') so the TV squishes the pictures to fill the screen and she looks fat...a very serious issue :devil:
Given her insistence on viewing at 16:9 the only way around this that I can think of is to add black bars left and right to make the 3:2 pics into a real 16:9 picture so when viewed at 16:9 on the TV the pics sit nicely in the middle of the screen and the AR is correct again....and she'll look good again.

I've got hundreds of pic videos, so I need a program that can 'batch' add/pad bars left and right. I can't find one. The pic videos are originally MPEG2, I then transcode to x264 in MKV. I use AutoMKV and HDConvertoX.

thanks in advance...
T

[Adub]

All you need is a simple batch script plus Avisynth's AddBorders() function.

Another alternative is to create a template in MeGUI's Avisynth profiles with the AddBorders() settings you want, and then run your videos through using the one click encoder.

[setarip_old]

@Tiberiust

I'll bet your wife is going to complain about the black borders ;>}

[Tiberiust]

@Adub
That seems an excellent solution - never used Avisynth directly b4, but seems simple enuf. Tks a lot

@setarip_old
Yea...wouldn't bet against that either! But I'll keep the originals so she can either be fat or barred, maybe I'll also do a run of in-betweens. :rolleyes: I've noticed the secret of gaining the time to get all this HTPC stuff done is to get her stuff done the way she wants it first, no matter what it takes, then there's less wining about me sitting in front of my PC for hours...

T

[Ghitulescu]

@Tiberiust

I'll bet your wife is going to complain about the black borders ;>}

The difference in DAR 3:2 vs. 16:9 is so small that the added black bars could be masked by overscan (you said RF output -> definitively overscan). On my old TV for sure (has about 10% overscan left and about 5-6% right).

[Adub]

@Tiberiust
No problem. Glad that I could help solve your problem.