Pan scan in DVDs

[CavalloPazzo]

I'm trying reauthoring my original LOT (PAL) DVD: When I open the main movie ifo file, it says AR 16-9 pan-scan. Does it means there are somewhere MV showing how to pan-scan? If so, where are they? If I rencode video (with CCE) and then reauthor with DVDMaestro I'll loose that information? Is there a way to keep them? On my PC I use media player classic to watch dvds, does this player support properly pan-scan of DVDs?

[griff2]

I think what the information means is that movie is a 16:9 pan and scan of the widescreen movie.

[slk001]

Actually, it means that the used can select PAN and SCAN viewing mode of a 16:9 AR movie. In the header of a MPG file, there is a Horizontal size value in the Sequence Display Extension that the video will "snap to" if PS is selected. This value for DVDs is about 540. You can lock out viewing pan and scan in the authoring process by selecting 16:9 as the aspect ratio.

[CavalloPazzo]

Doom9 in DVDMaestro Authoring guide says

Select 16:9 Letterbox from the list or leave it at 4:3 if your movie is 4:3. 16:9 Pan-Scan won't do you any good unless you have a special MPEG-2 stream that contains pan & scan motion vectors that would let the player to pan&scan on the fly. This feature is almost never used on commercially available DVDs.

How can I know if my DVD has that vectors? And if it has, can I use them when reauthoring?

[Matthew]

You can get the sides chopped of by:
1) Checking the panscan checkbox in CCE or adding SEQ data using restream after encoding; and
2) Enabling the pan and scan option in Maestro.

This way you'll have 3 choices ona standalone TV (dunno what the deal is with software players): 16:9 widescreen, 16:9 letterbox and 16:9 pan and scan.

Unless the movie is 1.78:1, 16:9 pan and scan still has black bars, they are just the same size as if you watched the movie on a widescreen TV.

I believe however that commercially authored DVDs that include this pan and scan feature can have different values for each frame, so that the area of the original picture that is displayed varies. So you may be sacrificing true pan and scan and just getting get scan (sides chopped off). AFAIK you can extract the data (I seem to remember doing this, not sure with what program), but can't use it with a new video stream.

[CavalloPazzo]

So there's not a way I can use "true" pan scan in my dvds :(
Thanks all for help

[Amnon82]

If You want to encode it in 4:3 You can use AVISYNTH 2.5.2 and DVD2AVI to resize the source in a AVS-Script. Create a D2V-Projectfile in DVD2AVI and enter this in a simple script:

LoadPlugin("Enter the path to MPEG2Dec3.dll")

Mpeg2Source("Enter the path to the D2V-File")
BicubicResize(720, 576, 0, 0.6, 90, 0, 540, 576)
AddBorders(0, 1, 0, -1)

Load the AVS-file in CCE 2.67.00.23 for example.

So You get Fullscreen if the movie is 1.85:1. If it is 2.35:1 You'll still have black borders and it will be a 4:3 Movie with the 1.85:1 Ratio.