How to organize diferent aspect ratios

[exobyte]

I encoded a a file to be 640x480 (so I could output to TV), but now I want to encode for a DVD. There are 2 parts (aspect ratios). One is 1.33:1, the other 2.35:1. I'm going to crop the 2.35:1 down to 640x272 and resize both up to 720x480.

How can I set this up so both play correctly? I want one to play right after the other, automatically. What program would be good for authoring? I don't really care about menus.

Will tmpgenc do a good job encoding?

[Dimmer]

If the second movie (2.35:1) is encoded at 640x480 with the actual picture size 640x272 and black bars at the top and bottom, then unfortunately you won't be able to make anamorphic 16:9 out of it in case that's what you had in mind. Cropping will only distort the picture. In other words, you have to encode both movies into 720x480 MPEG-2 as is. TMPGEnc will do a good job. Another popular encoder is CCE.

Since you don't care about menus, virtually any DVD authoring program will do.

[exobyte]

I did a little more research on the 2.35:1 part. Let me know if this sounds right:

If I tell tmpgenc that the ratio is 16:9 (or the other way), I need letterboxing as though THAT'S the ratio, not 1.33:1. To confirm things were right, I grabbed one of the output frames from virtualdub, scaled one side so the overall ratio was 16:9 in square pixels (I had to account for the off 720x480 size). I then added to the letterboxing until it was 1.33:1. Since the sizes matched the original, I think it's ok.

Am I doing this right?

[Dimmer]

Sorry, I don't understand exactly what you did during that last experiment, so I'll try to explain in general terms.

Standard DVD picture size is always 720x480 (for NTSC), regardless whether it's anamorphic or not. Aspect ratio is simply a flag in MPEG stream that tells DVD player to stretch the picture on a widescreen TV or add black bars on a regular TV. If your original 640x480 movie looks fine on computer monitor, it will look exactly the same on a regular TV when encoded at 720x480.

The reason you can't make an anamorphic movie in this case is that you have only 272 visible lines out of 480. Anamorphic 2.35:1 movie requires about 360 lines. If you have a widescreen TV, you can try to crop the picture to 640x364 and then zoom it to 720x480 setting the anamorphic flag on, but I doubt you'll get quality results. Some DVD players have Zoom button, and usually 1.5x zoom allows to fill up the screen, again with certain loss of quality depending on the player.

[exobyte]

Thank you. I think I've got it figured out.

Will increasing the average bitrate in 2 pass vbr reduce blocking artifacts?

[Dimmer]

Originally posted by exobyte
Will increasing the average bitrate in 2 pass vbr reduce blocking artifacts?Yes, most likely.