convert 4:3 (letterbox) to 16:9 (widescreen)

[Akid022]

Hi, forgive me if this is a newbie question or if it is not the corrent place to post, but here it goes anyway.
Is there any way to convert 4:3(letterbox) to 16:9(widescreen) without re-encoding? Is there a tool what would allow you to crop off a portion of the black bars so the picture would display correctly on a 16:9 tv.

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome to Doom9's forum!

You're going to have to provide more information if you want specific answers.

For instance, your question doesn't state sources or destination formats, nor methodologies. And using that example, there would be very different answers for discussion of PC video with square pixels, compared with DVD video with anamorphic pixels and variable pixel aspect ratios.

[Akid022]

Sorry for leaving details out. I don’t know much about this subject as I just recently started backing up my dvds. I’ll try to explain more clearly now.

Firstly I’m talking about DVD movies, I’ve seen 3 types of aspect ratios on dvds, 4:3(full screen) 16:9 (anamorphic widescreen with aspect ratios of either 1.85:1 or 2.35:1) and 4:3 (letterbox with display aspect ratio of 2.35:1). What I would like to do is convert a 4:3 letterbox movie to a 16:9 widescreen since 16:9 widescreen movies with a aspect ratio of 2.35:1 can be viewed as 1.85:1 with the picture slightly stretched vertically.

The reason is simply because I hate this type of encoded movies, because when you watch them on a regular 4:3 tv you get really big black bars on top and bottom of the tv and I heard that when you watch these movies on a widescreen tv (I don’t have one yet) you get black bars on all 4 sides unless you zoom in, that sucks.

I’ve been reading posts about this subject and I read that people have done this using an AviSynth script and then re-encoding with CCE/TEMPGec, which is what I don’t want to do because aside from taking a long time to encode, some movies are less than 4.47GB and I suspect I would be loosing quality for nothing. That’s why I asked if there a tool that would allow you to crop without the re-encoding part. As for file formats it would be great if you can do this straight from the .vob file, but working with .m2v or .mpg files is cool too.

I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean by methodologies.

[jggimi]

Methodologies = procedures and tools you might use in encoding and/or playback.

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Here's a level set on DVD aspect ratios -- please forgive me if this is stuff you already know....

Commercial DVD video is in one of two resolutions. PAL: 720x576 pixels. NTSC 720x480 pixels (NTSC), and the author/encoder selects one of two Display Aspect Ratios (DARs) 4:3 or 16:9. This selection is regardless of the original content's aspect ratio, which could be one of many different aspect ratios.

The amount of letterboxing encoded in the video stream will depend upon the DAR, and will depend upon the original content's aspect ratio. Obviously, a "widescreen" movie will have less letterboxing with a DAR of 16:9 than 4:3, though there is nothing preventing the author/encoder from choosing unwisely. You've mentioned you've seen these, as many of us have.

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You want playback on a 16:9 TV from a standalone player. For standalone players, the customer describes the aspect ratio of the television during installation/setup, and the player adjusts the image when the DAR and TV aspect ratio are mismatched.

Software DVD players always resize the video image, as PC monitors use square pixels. With square pixels, PAL DVDs are 1.25:1, and NTSC are 1.5:1. A number of software video players can re-adjust aspect ratios on the fly. Unfortunately, you won't be able to take advantage of this. I think, for standalone playback, resizing and rencoding would be required to change the DAR from 16:9 to 4:3.

Someone with more knowledge may reply; don't give up hope entirely.

[Akid022]

Thank you for your imput, I guess for right now there is no getting around the re-econding part, but I will keep my eyes open as new tools to manipulate video files keep showing up all the time.
Thanks again.

[Skip Around]

BS Player might be what your looking for. It will let you set custom (mistake fixer) aspect ratios. You can then force your movie to play back with the custom ratio. It also has a custom overscan feature that can fixup some playback problems. It can be downloaded here on Doom9 (free).

[manono]

Hi-

What I would like to do is convert a 4:3 letterbox movie to a 16:9 widescreen since 16:9 widescreen movies with a aspect ratio of 2.35:1 can be viewed as 1.85:1 with the picture slightly stretched vertically.

You really want to convert the movie so that it has bad AR? Are you serious? It'll be more than slightly stretched. It'll be all too noticeable. I certainly wouldn't recommend doing that. The other way to get it to fill the screen is to crop off the sides so that the 2.35:1 movie is converted to 1.85:1 with proper AR. But I wouldn't recommend doing that either. And either way requires reencoding, unless you have one of the very few DVD Players or widescreen TV sets than can do that kind of zooming for you. I'm pretty sure that the Malata series of DVD Players can do it.

I heard that when you watch these movies on a widescreen tv (I don’t have one yet) you get black bars on all 4 sides unless you zoom in, that sucks.

The only thing that sucks is that the studio had it made as a 4:3 widescreen letterboxed movie, rather than as 16:9 anamorphic. But that's one of the reasons for the zoom feature on widescreen TVs.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Over here in the UK, there does not seem to be many DVD's released now that are not marked as 'widescreen' (or formatted specifically for a 16:9 [1.77:1] television).

However, couple of years ago the wife purchased a copy of Titanic for the kids which was 4:3 (a 2.35:1 image overlaid onto a 4:3 source background).

Personally, I could never seen the point of releasing such discs. I also could never see the point of having the 'widescreen' version of a movie on one side of the disc and 'standard/fullscreen' version or whatever on the other side. But, I would be interested to know if such DVD's are still being manufactured.

As jggimi said, on a DVD stand alone player you have the ability of telling it what size TV it's connected too anyway.

If Akid022 is interested I can PM him or post here a list of the most popular aspect ratio sizes together with the total number of pixels occupied by both the image and the matte.

Some people may find it usefull!

[manono]

Hi SMD-

Over here in the UK, there does not seem to be many DVD's released now that are not marked as 'widescreen' (or formatted specifically for a 16:9 [1.77:1] television).

You Europeans are way ahead of us Americans in that respect. We still have many widescreen movies being released with a DAR of 4:3.

But, I would be interested to know if such DVD's are still being manufactured.

I haven't seen any of those "flipper" types recently. But what is real common is to have a 2 DVD set with the widescreen version on one disc and the fullscreen version on the other. Either that or they'll release 2 different versions of the DVD, one fullscreen and the other widescreen. As an example, I recently borrowed some DVDs from my brother-in-law to watch. It wasn't until later that I noticed that their Road To Perdition DVD was the fullscreen version. I refused to watch it. And they have a widescreen television! So when they watch such DVDs, or even when watching regular television shows, they zoom them to fullscreen on the 16:9 set, so that everyone looks fat. :rolleyes: I've given up trying to explain aspect ratios to them. It's like beating my head against a brick wall.

[SeeMoreDigital]

How weird is that...

It wasn't until later that I noticed that their Road To Perdition DVD was the fullscreen version. I refused to watch it. And they have a widescreen television! So when they watch such DVDs, or even when watching regular television shows, they zoom them to fullscreen on the 16:9 set, so that everyone looks fat. I've given up trying to explain aspect ratios to them. It's like beating my head against a brick wall.

The same thing happened to me with my brother in law, when just last month, he and my sister were showing off their new 32" widescreen TV, DVD player and digital set top box.

Every piece of equipment had been set up incorrectly by the so called 'installers'. The TV's AR setting had not been configured to 'auto'. The DVD player and digital set top box settings had not been configured to '16:9'. And worse still, the digital set top box was'nt even connected to the TV via scart, just RF coax.

In the end however, I was able to explain why a 2.35:1 image left black bars at the top and bottom of the screen but it was touch and go for a while.

Anyway they've gone completely mad now with the old 'home entertainment' thing. As I got a phone call this morning inviting me to connect their new digital surround sound amp.......

Lucky me!

[Monkeychops]

I've only done the conversion Akid002 describes once.

I was bought a widescreen copy of Goldeneye as a present and to me it represents a travesty of digital imaging. I have a widescreen TV and was expecting a lovely big image to widely fill the screen. Imagine my disgust to find this miniscule image only covering 1/3 of the 4:3 screen mode.

You can zoom the picture in to fill most of the screen (you get some bars at the sides), but I find that this leaves little black lines across the screen which can get annoying after a while. As an exercise in improvement, I worked out how much of the top and bottom borders you would have to remove to give a vertically stretched image that would have the correct final aspect ratio when the TV was set to 16:9 mode.

Can't remember exactly how I did it but think it revolved around the 16:9 mode scales horizontally by 4/3 so had to scale the picture up up by 4/3 vertically in a resize and then cropped top and bottom to make the correct standard frame height. (I think - perhaps I'll try it again....)

Bit of head scratching later, bingo, virtually full screen picture (maybe slightly less quality, but not really noticable), and no funny stretching. Makes you wonder why the studio is so cheap to make this kind of conversion in the first place?

Guess it's what floats your boat - big picture, maybe some definition loss in resizing, TV zoom, or grin and bear it.

[justin]

I haven't seen any of those "flipper" types recently. But what is real common is to have a 2 DVD set with the widescreen version on one disc and the fullscreen version on the other. Either that or they'll release 2 different versions of the DVD, one fullscreen and the other widescreen. As an example, I recently borrowed some DVDs from my brother-in-law to watch. It wasn't until later that I noticed that their Road To Perdition DVD was the fullscreen version. I refused to watch it. And they have a widescreen television! So when they watch such DVDs, or even when watching regular television shows, they zoom them to fullscreen on the 16:9 set, so that everyone looks fat. :rolleyes: I've given up trying to explain aspect ratios to them. It's like beating my head against a brick wall.lol, sorry to be offtopic, but I know what you mean, my parents have a 52" 16:9 widescreen TV. Whenever they want to watch a DVD with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, they stretch it vertically so that it takes up the fullscreen (they were told that letterboxing might cause uneven amounts of dust to accumulate along the black bar region which would ultimately dim that portion of the lens). But they don't just stretch it so that it fits the whole screen, they use Theater Wide 2 mode to warp it so it's stretched beyond the top so that the heads are cut off, I tried to explain to them that the image is stretched, and they say "see, this is the way it's meant to be played"