4:3 with bars -> 16:9

[Eldorado]

I have a DVD9 movie which is a Laser Disc transfer, and the movie appears to have been previously widescreen, then re-encoded and black bars added as part of the picture to be 4:3

I'd like to make a backup of this movie and in the process redo the video to bring it back to it's original 16:9 ratio. But my problem is I'm not sure exactly how!

First step, should I crop the black bars? If so, how do I know how much to crop? Another problem is, seperate from the subtitles there are another set of subtitles that always appear as a translation for when aliens talk, but are shown in the bottom black border.. is there any saving these, or just forget about them? They appear to be encoded as part of the video (the display when subtitles are set to none)

I've read some of the other threads that talk about almost what I want to do, I've tried one of the suggestions in a 4:3->16:9 conversion thread to use the following in the avisynth script to resize the video, it worked but the video was obviously stretched vertically, and some of the black bars were still present:
BicubicResize(720,480,1/3,1/3,0,60,720,360)

Kinda hard trying to explain it all, but I'm more confused on what I can and shouldn't do. I'd prefer removing the black bars since they aren't solid black and look pretty grainy, and of course take up valuable bits when re-encoding! I also prefer having my movies at 16:9. And avisynth scripts definately isn't one of my strong points :)

[bubbaleroy]

Do you use TMPGEnc? This is what I have done.

http://www.pegasys-inc.co.jp/bbscgi/search/docs/en/tmpgenc/box54/tmpgenc_post_20827.html#topic20827

[Eldorado]

I forgot to say what I was using, no I don't use TMPGEnc, I've never been happy with the quality from it. I only use CCE..

Tho I will try that method out, thanks for the link!

[dirk67]

Hi,

there's no benefit in doing this. The additional pixels in the original anamorphic source are gone forever. You just waste bitrate by blowing up the letterboxed version. Besides, if the laserdisc transfer was interlaced, as I have seen sometimes, you'll get all kinds of artifacts. Just leave the vertical resolution as it is.

Dirk

[hakko504]

Originally posted by Eldorado
First step, should I crop the black bars? If so, how do I know how much to crop? Another problem is, seperate from the subtitles there are another set of subtitles that always appear as a translation for when aliens talk, but are shown in the bottom black border.. is there any saving these, or just forget about them? They appear to be encoded as part of the video (the display when subtitles are set to none)

I've read some of the other threads that talk about almost what I want to do, I've tried one of the suggestions in a 4:3->16:9 conversion thread to use the following in the avisynth script to resize the video, it worked but the video was obviously stretched vertically, and some of the black bars were still present:
BicubicResize(720,480,1/3,1/3,0,60,720,360) You're on the right track. The problem is that if the video in the picture isn't exactly 16:9 then you will either rezise black bars or crop some pixels of the top/bottom of the video. A better solution is to crop all black bars, resize the height to 4/3 of the cropped size and add the black bars back with Addborder. And the video will look distorted, since all DVD's store the video as 720x480/576 and a special flag that tells the decoder how to display the video (16:9 or 4:3).

Also the smooth bicubic resizer you are using is smoothing the picture quite a lot. When increasing size you should use LanczosResize instead (included in v2.07 and later: if you don't use that version, or newer, you should update.)

The following script is a function that will automatically resize correctly, if you provide 3 parameters, the clip, how much to crop from the top and bottom function AspectRatioChanger(clip clip, int top, int "bottom")
{
#
# if only one argument then use same crop on top and bottom.
# crop should be even
#
top=top+(top%2)
bottom=default(bottom,top)
bottom=bottom+(bottom%2)

#
#Sanity Checks
#
Assert((top+bottom)>=(clip.height/4),"You must crop at least 1/4th of the video in order to convert it to 16:9")
Assert((top+bottom)<clip.height,"You can't clip the whole video!")

#
# Crop the video
#
video1=clip.crop(0,top,0,-bottom)

#
# Resize
#
newheight=round(4*video1.height/3)
LanczosResize(video1.width,newheight)

#
# Re-add borders
#
topadd=round((clip.height-newheight)/2)
bottomadd=clip.height-newheight-topadd
Addborders(0,topadd,0,bottomadd)
}

And to use this function you do like this:Mpeg2source(DVD43.d2v)
AspectRatioChanger(last,72)
orvideo=Mpeg2source(DVD43.d2v)
AspectRatioChanger(video,60,80)

[Eldorado]

Hey great, thanks for the help!

The video is interlaced, and was quite a pain trying to find the right way to de-interlace it!

Question, How do I know how much to crop without doing trial and error? I loaded it into TMPGEnc and started clipping lines from top and bottom as I could see a preview of the video as I did it, it appears that 96 might be my magic number but want to be sure. Does this tell me anything about what the original video was?

[bubbaleroy]

You are right. Just crop until you no longer see the black borders. Be sure you set your input to 4:3 and your output to 16:9. The preview in clip frame should show you what your actual output will be.
Does this tell me anything about what the original video was?
Well I'm positive the original video was 720x480 if NTSC. I dosen't matter whether 4:3 or 16:9 it is always stored as 720x480. The pixels are not square. If thats what you ment.

[screw]

I have done this for some movies, using CCE. My .AVS script for that is as follows (un-comment necessary line):
-----------------------------------
LoadPlugin("D:\Tools\AviSynth2\plugins\MPEG2DEC.dll")

mpeg2source("D:\TEMP\Test.d2v")

# Resizes the image using the lanczos3 algorithm

#This is Crop and Resize from PAL 4:3 to 16:9
#LanczosResize(720,576,0,72,720,432)
#BilinearResize(720,576,0,72,720,432)

#This is Crop and Resize from NTSC 4:3 to 16:9
LanczosResize(720,480,0,48,720,384)
#BilinearResize(720,480,0,48,720,384)

ResampleAudio(44100)
-----------------------------------
Of course, do not forget to set CCE output to 16:9.

Screw

[jdobbs]

Also the smooth bicubic resizer you are using is smoothing the picture quite a lot. When increasing size you should use LanczosResize instead (included in v2.07 and later: if you don't use that version, or newer, you should update.)

hakko504,

Shows what happens when you don't keep up with the times. I didn't even know LanczosResize existed. I just redid my copy of "American President" -- it is 4:3 letterbox on the original. Man, the difference is startling... it is much clearer than BicubicResize. Thanks for a very useful tip!

[Eldorado]

Great, thanks for all the tips! Definately helps..

Just noticed something a little odd while doing all of this.. the beginning of the movie starts with a 20th Century Fox logo that does an effect from close to far out, when it's close it fills the whole screen (4:3), then after that everything is letterboxed.. I've seen this on other DVD's but the videos were seperate (two different title sets), during the conversion could they have just put the two together as one?

Also, as I said aside from the subtitles they have words encoded right into where the black bars are as translations for when the aliens in the movie talk..

I guess I could do without them as it's used minimally.. but considering this, am I then wrong in assuming that it was orginally widescreen?