3000miles to graceland 4:3 and not 16:9

[Kilyan]

Hi!

I've recently bought the movie 3000to graceland. Wanted to amke a backup, but.
The m2v video is in 4:3 aspect ratio, so that they encoded the black bars on top and bottom with the movie (the real film is 2:25 to 1), so the bars are jerky. My problem is that I want to get a 16:9 aspect ratio with fine black bars.
I tried to crop with dvd2avi but I always get a bad aspect ratio in cce.
Tried to use virtualdub too but that gives bad result too.
I also tried to use in my avisynth script the letterbox function which worked fine but, in the final cce encoded movie, I get compressed aspect ratio If I choose 16:9.
How can I eliminate correctly the jerky black bars and encode the film in cce with 16:9 using avisynth and dvd2avi?


Thanks

[auenf]

you will have to crop to 720x405 then stretch that back out to 720x480/576.

you wont gain any quality by making it 16:9, and encoding it at 4:3 will result in a lower overall bitrate.

Enf...

[Kilyan]

Thanks!

But I don't understand. I dont want to stretch, just want to crop and have cce do it 16/9. But also I dont understand the crop function in avisynth (top, left, width, height), it should be (top, bottom , left right) no?
When is a movie 16:9, its just a flag and the picture height 405 (I mean I have PAL, dont know if 405 is for PAL or NTSC)??

[auenf]

DVD compliant res (D1) is 720x576/480 (HalfD1 and SIF are also supported, but the aspect ratios work the same).

the DVD mpeg video stream can have an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9, but in both cases the resolution of the stream is the same size. on playback the video is stretched to the desired aspect ratio (in the case of 720x576 PAL 16:9, the playback resolution ends up at 1024x576).

read the aspect ratio's explained in the basics section of the doom9 page for more info on the aspects.

Enf...

[Kilyan]

Thanks Auenf!
I'll try to do my best :)

[markrb]

Are you sure that this movie is letterbox(having the black bars encoded as part of the movie to fill it to 4:3 or could it be that since the movie is 2.35:1 and DVD is set to 1.85:1 and in cases where the ratio is greater movie makers encode black bars to make up the difference?
The Bourne Idendity is very much like this. The movie is 2.35:1 so to make it DVD compliant they encoded a black matting to make the final video 1.85:1 so that DVD players can properly add the black bars and widescreen DVD's keep the correct aspect ratio.
If you remove these included black bars the video comes out all wrong and stretched when you play it in your DVD player.

If it is letterbox then if you must you could crop only enough off to make it 1.85:1 then this will be DVD compliant or if the encoded black bars are giving you problems then crop them all off and then add your own with the avisynth command addborders. You need to keep the final video 1.85:1 though unless you want it to look stretched.

Mark

[Kilyan]

Hi!

It is 4:3 with the black borders encoded all over, up to the top, I'm sure because it's has block noise all over. But I tried to crop it with dvd2avi and I had to crop 128 from top and 128 from bottom too, to get only the "active" part only.
Didn't have time this weekend to read the guide. Will begin soon.

The reason of the topic was not to reencode these black bars.

Thanks guys!
(Sorry for my poor english)

[FamousPerson]

Kilyan,

I have a 16:9 TV and personally, I hate it when a movie is 4:3 widescreen, as you are experiencing here. I see it alot in older DVDs. Of course my TV has a "zoom" setting that will make the movie fill the screen, but I like to use subtitles, and when the TV is in that mode you cannot see the subs.

Anyway, I like to convert all 4:3 letterbox movies to 16:9 (anamorphic). Here is the fastest way to do it. Add this line to your AviSynth script:


BicubicResize(720,480,1/3,1/3,0,60,720,360)

[Kilyan]

Thanks FamousPerson!

By the settings you use Bicubicresize you convert ntsc films from 4:3 to 16:9.
So you tell me I only have to add this line to
#load dll
#mpegsource
#yourline

With your line for PAL it should be?:
BicubicResize(720,576,1/3,1/3,0,60,720,432)
I am not sure for 0 and 60. I think avisynth description htmls should be more explanatory.

Thanks

[FamousPerson]

Yes, here is a full script for NTSC:

LoadPlugin("MPEG2DEC.DLL")
mpeg2source("project.d2v")
BicubicResize(720,480,1/3,1/3,0,60,720,360)
ResampleAudio(44100)

and (I believe) for PAL:

LoadPlugin("MPEG2DEC.DLL")
mpeg2source("project.d2v")
BicubicResize(720,576,1/3,1/3,0,72,720,432)
ResampleAudio(44100)

I'm pretty sure your "60" should be "72"

[Kilyan]

Thanks a lot!!
I'll try it this weekend.

[Toti]

I have had the same problem with "Back To The Future Trilogy", "The Siege" and others. Also, alot of Trailers come like that too. They are widescreen within the 4:3. What I do is create a DVD2Avi then input to TMPGEnc (wonderfull program) and create a TPR project. This TMPGEnc project is converted to a fake avi using VFAPIConv to be able to input to CCE SP.

This solves the problem but.......Why do Movies Studios do such thing? Any benefit from it?

My biggest problem is that when you have a 16:9 aspect ratio TV you end up with black bars top, bottom and sides. After I do that on my DVD-R backup I have the video as it should but I do not know if the video suffers because of this.

My best guess it does since you are like zooming it to make it fit the 16:9 but I have not make any testings on this.

[FamousPerson]

Toti,

Anamorphic widescreen just wasn't used much in the nineties. These days, almost all new disks have it, but most of the older ones are letterboxed 4:3. I actually can't believe more people don't complain about this. I guess not too many people have widescreen TV's.

Your method may work, but you could do it a lot faster by using the method above. AviSynth is much faster than VFAPIConv (which I used to use) and you don't have to bother with TMPG.