Adding Letterboxes without cropping

[dbzgundam]

Is there an AVISynth filter for adding Letterboxes without cropping the image possibly...Like for DVD authoring on 16X9 images (16x9 LBX with the actual movie inside)

As far as I know I read about creating letterboxes by cutting off the sides of the image to make room for it...But what about making the letterbox in the VirtualDub like manner where the letterbox expands over the image.

Please tell me what filters can do this.

[albertgasset]

The "AddBorders" function that comes with Avisynth does this. Take a look at the Avisynth documentation, you can do more with Avisynth built-in functions than you could expect!

Example: if you have a 720x432 video (typical pixels used in 2.35:1 anamorphic films in DVD) and you want to add borders to reach 720x576 frame size, use AddBorders(0, 72, 0, 72).

Another option is the LetterBox function (it blacks the top and bttom of the video, keeping the frame size, it doesn't expand the video).

These are the different ways to letterbox a video, and Avisynth has specific functions for each one.

[kitanai]

Hi,

I am going to use the Addborders(...) function, too.
The reason is a compatibility question here:

My video size is 688x560, and I would like to be able to play it on a stand alone player in the future. GordianKnot says for max. compatibility the width should be a multiple of 32 and the height of 16.

Do you recommend expanding the frame to 704x576 or even full DVD (720x576, which, however, is not a multiple of 32...) :confused:

Thanks for your help!

[Boulder]

I don't think you should add any borders (neither by LetterBox or AddBorders) if you're encoding to any MPEG-4 format (DivX, XviD). Your best bet would be to crop and resize accordingly so that the aspect ratio error would be tolerable and the compatibility terms would be met.

Or are you talking about a already encoded clip since you have such a strange frame size?

[kitanai]

No, it is a VHS-PAL capture. I recorded at 720x576 and then cropped the ugly parts all around. So aspect ration is no issue.

I want to archive it on a DVD-R with full resolution in XviD-MPEG-4, so I can play it on a stand alone player.

Therefore, my question is, wether to expand the frame to 704 or even full DVD-720 to get maximum compatibility. Bitrate does not matter at this point ;)

[Boulder]

I'd downsize to 640x480, if you got a 720x576 source and crop to 688x560, the AR error according to Gordian Knot is 0.8% which is unnoticable. I don't think that 704 x something is any more compatible, in fact it might be the other way around. Also it's always better to downsize than upsize. If bitrate is no problem, use the standard MPEG matrix and Lanczos to resize for more sharpness:)

[kitanai]

Hmmm, in this case I am not perfectly happy with resizing...

I have no idea what a stand alone player makes of 640x480.

If there is anyone out there who can throw in some experiences, I would be very happy :D

[Boulder]

I know that you meant a standalone player;) I suppose the player scales the video properly as needed, and 640x480 is exactly the same as 1.33:1=4:3 so there should be no problems.

See the Hardware section on the forum, I'm sure you'll find lots of useful stuff there. You'll also have to make sure you don't use the encoding options that are not properly supported (qpel probably one them).