Help with converting Letterbox to Anamorphic Widescreen

[Mythos2002]

Hello,

I'm trying to convert some of my Laserdiscs to DVD-R. I want to convert them from 2.35:1 Letterbox 4:3 to 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen 16:9 and am having some trouble. Here is a little background. I have the latest Virtual Dub, the latest TMPNGEnc Plus version, and a 4:3 TV. The reason I'm going 16:9 is that I plan to get a Widescreen HDTV down the line. I'm in the US, so my Laserdiscs are NTSC.

What I've done so far is capture the LD's in Virtual Dub at 720x480 using Huffyuv for compression. I have encoded small test clips in TMPNGEnc. From what I've been told, I'm supposed to set the Video stream option to 16:9 Display, set the Source to 4:3 NTSC 525 Line (720x480), and set the Video Arrange Method to Full Screen (Keep Aspect Ratio). I've done that as well as tried the other 4:3 source settings. The result is that I get an image that not only has the top and bottom black bars (which it should), but it also has bars on the right and left. The bars on the sides are there regardless if I play the clips in Windows Media Player, WinDVD, or on my TV with a test DVD-RW. I've tried using the following AVISynth script:

LoadPlugin("g:\decombfilter\Decomb.dll")
Avisource("e:\Empire\empire1.avi")
Telecide(guide=0,post=false)
Decimate(mode=0,cycle=5)
LanczosResize(720,480,0,102,720,276)
AddBorders(0,60,0,60)

I have also tried loading my AVI file straight into TMPNG instead of using an AVI script and using the Clip frame option in TMPNG to handle the masking of the black bars. This way, I will get new black bars without any noise in them and they will be a darker black as well.

Is there something I'm doing terribly wrong? I'm using DVD Movie Factory 2 for the authoring. Do I need to use an authoring program that allows me to input a 16:9 DAR flag in order for me to play these clips on my 4:3 set with the correct aspect ratio and black bars on the top and bottom only?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried searching for the answer, but so many of the posts I found deal with SVCD's and VCD's instead of DVD. Thanks.

Mythos

[FulciLives]

Well usually a NTSC video with an aspect ratio 2.35:1 is about 720x272 when you crop off the top and bottom.

So you want to crop 104 off the top and 104 off the bottom.

Resize your video (which is now 720x272 assuming you captured at 720x480 to begin with) to 720x360

Do the AddBorders command adding 60 to the top and bottom. This gets you back to 720x480

Now import your AviSynth AVS script into TMPGEnc as a 16x9 source.

The other method you could use if you JUST want to use TMPGEnc is to import the video as 4:3 then crop 60 off the top and bottom and use FULL SCREEN for the video arrange method which will then stretch the image to 16x9

The only problem with the second method is with movies that have an aspect ratio wider than 1.78:1 you will be encoding some of the original black which really is no big deal if you will only watch it on a 16x9 TV but on a 4:3 TV the old black and the new black the DVD player adds when doing the 16x9 to 4:3 conversion may not match.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
When you crop the image you have to keep it even ... you can't crop say 103 off the top and 103 off the bottom for instance. You would have to either crop 102 or 104 from both the top/bottom. Otherwise you screw up the field order of interlaced material.