Cropping and Aspect Ratio

[mangis]

Just wondering is anyone knows if the Black bars down the sides of 4:3 movies are included in the Aspect Ratio. My example is the Star Trek:TNG DVDs. I have ripped them to my computer perfectly but there are black bars up the left and right sides of the movie. Do I resize to a 4:3 aspect as is or do I crop the bars and then resize.

[808state]

I would defiantly crop those black bars on the sides otherwise when you encode your video the encoder will have to allocate bitrate to the fine line between the bars and your video, this would take away much needed precious bitrate from your actual video source.

[Shandra]

As I am most confused with AR and PR by now.... maybe you take look at some sides for it (maybe even the guides here).... but from the things I learned so far... you can easily crop those bars... but then resize (as without cropping) according to specs.... if you understand german, take a look at "aspect ratios for dummies"... ("for capture cards", link somewhere to be found in the doom9.de forum) or at: http://www.uwasa.fi/~f76998/video/conversion/
So no penalty by cropping, just do the calculation right...

And yes, I am also confused by the information - more due to the fact that each message you find is in contratiction to the others - but nevertheless confused....

CU,
SHAnDRA

P.S.: What concerns me most (for DVD backup) is that through the thinks I learned it seems that even if you just want to keep the original "720x576" you have to do a hor.res. to make it the fitting PR/(AR) to be watched on PC...

[Kika]

but there are black bars up the left and right sides of the movie

Congratulations, they have build one of the rare correct sized DVDs. ;)

Crop the Bars to get the horizontal size of 704. That's the active (Motion) Area of the Movie.
The Link, Shandra postet, descripes it really good.