BlackHawk Down - Black/Gray Borders

[Dystaxia]

Ok, after messing with this for 3 days, finally getting the subtitles to work correctly (never had to do them before... or cared for that matter) - Now I have a new problem.

After using CCE to encode it (Looks awesome!) and using Maestro to complie it, I burned it to a DVD-R and popped it into the player. Was very disappointed.

Seems that the actual video is only 720x360 with 120 pixels added on the top and bottom (total.. about 58 on top and 62 on bottom) to get the required 720x480 res for DVD.

When played in the home DVD player, I now have (from top to bottom of the screen...) very black bar, gray bar, movie, gray bar, then black bar. Kinda annoying.

What I'm looking to do is somehow insert pure black fields at the top and bottom of the xxxxxxxx.m2v file from CCE so that it will blend in with the bars created by the DVD player for 16x9 LB, hopefully without have to spend another 8 hours re-encoding it.

Other than that, it looks great! Any help or ideas would awesome.

Dystaxia

[TRILIGHT]

If you're frameserving via Avisynth, you can use the "Letterbox" command. Usage as follows:
Letterbox (top,bottom,clip)
Of course, you'd still have to run through an encoding process and it seems like that is what you want to avoid. Even if you were to try doing this in a NLE like Adobe Premiere, you'd still have to wait for it to render during export. I'd imagine something went wrong. I've never seen anything like that before. I'm working on that particular title right now. My first pass will complete in about an hour. I'll let you know what I find.

[jdobbs]

Don't know what version you used... but the NTSC version I have is in 16:9 anamorphic format.

[TRILIGHT]

Well, after finishing the first pass, I went ahead and burned just the video real quick to check it out. I don't see a thing like you mention. I even cranked the brightness on my TV way up to see if it was partially hidden. When I have the brightness up high and I'm right up next to the TV, I notice a dark grayish line that is almost 100% opaque over the video but it's height is less than the width of a pencil. It's hardly noticeable (if at all) at a darker screen setting and sitting across the room. I'm using the S-video out of a Sony DVD player into a Sony 4:3 television.

[Dystaxia]

Hmm.. same output here... Sony DVD player using S-video to a Sony 4:3 Flatscreen TV. What program are you using to re-encode it? Settings, etc...

Dys

[auenf]

ahh, its a 2.35:1 animorphic movie, (16:9 animorphic is 1.85:1), the 'grey bars' are part of the movie, the black bars are added by the DVD player.

unfortunately you are going to HAVE to re-encode, but you should be able to use the letterbox command in avisynth or virtualdub.

as for where the 'grey bars' have come from, maybe you should search for CCE and bright results.

Enf...

[Dystaxia]

Thanx, trying another encode, going to be gone all day, so what the hell.

Also, this will save you some time if you are doing BHD - The subtitles that are "forced on" - translation from "skinnie" to english are the following:

#6, 7, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 996, 997, 998, 1102, 1196

Total are 1410 subtitles - After doing it half a dozen times, I decided to write down the ones that were forced on, hope it saves somebody some time!

Dystaxia

[jdobbs]

This DVD is a 16:9 anamorphic encoding. The film itself is 2.35:1 but the black or grey bars are added to bring it to correct sizing for 16:9... There is no such thing as 2.35:1 anamorphic encoding in DVD.

I would guess that the "black" that is added by the player (playing a 16:9 on a 4:3 screen) doesn't match the "black" that is encoded into the 16:9 anamorphic video. You could reencode and crop to get only the movie, then add black bars -- it will probably match then.

[Dystaxia]

Well, I changed the "Luminance Level" in CCE from "16 to 235" to "0 to 255" and that seemed to help, will complie it and let you know how it turned out.

[TRILIGHT]

Let us know! :) I'm watching the movie now and almost to the end. Still haven't noticed anything strange. Except, like an idiot, I forgot to go back and do the "forced on" subtitles. Hell, you even gave the numbers!! hehe ;) I'm just not willing to waste a disc. I'll leave it as is.

[Dystaxia]

Yep, the Luminance Level is what the problem was. Works like a champ now!

Sorry to hear about the subtitles... :) Trust me, I know, I did it twice! Was lucky though and caught it prior to burning.

[TRILIGHT]

Can anyone shed some light on why Dystaxia would have to change the luminance level to 0-255 when the 16-235 worked fine for me? I'm at a loss for where the problem came from.

[scryber]

I had a similar experience with BHD. I didn't use avisynth however-- I merely ripped the m2v file and re-encoded in TMPGEnc.

I put the file (along with the AC3 file) in DVDMaestro and the first time forgot to change the aspect ratio from 4:3. No gray bars but obviously the image was stretched. So I then changed it to 16:9 and the gray bars appeared. I thought I had done something wrong with the re-encode and have been wary of re-encoding 16:9 files ever since.

But now it seems that this movie was a special case. So is it correct to assume that 2.35:1 animorphic movies have this gray issue all the time?

[markrb]

One thing I did by accident on The Bourne Identity which is also a 2.35:1 video is I had the luminance filter in DVD2AVI on and added a few numbers to the brightness. This caused that grey bar next to the black back just like was stated above. I made sure to go back and shut it off before I re-encoded. Luckily my first burn was on a DVD-RW so I didn't loose a disc.

Mark

[TRILIGHT]

I'm interested in knowing what players seem to exhibit this anomaly? I just did "The Bourne Identity" myself last week, using the same settings I usually do, and did not notice anything. I've played it back on a Sony and a Panasonic DVD player since then.

[scryber]

My DVD player is a Pioneer 343.