Slideshow resolution problem

[cyberbob25]

I posted last week about getting a slideshow video slowed down to match the audio track. Thanks to all you brilliant people out there, I got this fixed.

However, the problem I am running into now is aspect ratio. I am using a freeware program called Slideshow Moviemaker. I add the slides, create the transitions, and it outputs an XVID avi file. I can select whatever resolution I want to when exporting, and it automatically adds the black bars to fill the resolution. I obviously choose 720x480 for NTSC resolution. The resulting avi file plays back fine.

I then load the avi file into CCE for encoding, only chaning the # of passes and bitrate from the default. The resulting mpv file appears squeezed (people look tall and skinny).

If I choose a aspect ratio of SAR1:1 in CCE, it looks correct, but then DVD-Lab doesn't like that input because there is no DAR set. It will let me burn anyway, but then the resulting video is again squeezed when played back. What can I do to not squeeze the video?

[manono]

Hi-

It kind of depends on the size of the pictures, doesn't it? If they're originally 1.33:1 and look "normal" at, say, 640x480. then if you can stretch them out to 720x480 with no black bars added, they'll look weird in the XviD .avi, but when encoded to DVD with 4:3 DAR, the .mpv should play them normally.

That's with the destination as DVD, and the ITU standard in effect.

You really should let FitCD (http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_tools/fitcd.cfm) handle this kind of thing for you.

[cyberbob25]

The problem is that the pictures aren't normal resolutions (they were digitized by the photographer at my brother in law's wedding) and they are all different from each other.

When I am creating this AVI and I have the resolution set for 720x480, shouldn't it look correct? I am failing to understand how the original picture even comes into play, since the xvid avi file is playing at 720x480 resolution (confirmed with GSpot).

I will give fitcd a try, though it looks fairly complicated.

[ammck55]

I can't offer any help on your XviD issue, but if the differing image resolution poses a problem, can't you just manually re-size your images? If you've enough images to make it a time drag, photo editors such as PhotoShop have a batch command that would allow you to apply the mod(ification) to multiple images simultaneously.

Come to think of it, IrfanView is a free utility that can do this for you, too; I haven't used it in such a long time that I'd forgotten about it.

ammck55

[manono]

Hi-

When I am creating this AVI and I have the resolution set for 720x480, shouldn't it look correct?

No. Avis are 1:1. What you see is what you get. DVDs are either 16:9 or 4:3 (4:3 in your case), and get resized by the player. So, the unresized picture looks not normal until after it's resized. Have you ever looked at the vobs of a DVD in DVD2AVI, or looked at the unresized .d2v in GKnot? They don't look right until after being resized (again, depending on whether 4:3 or 16:9). Doom9's article Aspect Ratios Explained (http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm) may help you to understand this a bit better.

For your purposes, you can ignore the whole top half of FitCD. You feed it a 640x480 normal looking .avi ("Source"), set 1:1 Monitor check the ITU box if desired, set the destination for DVD, and it tells you how to crop (none needed if 640x480) and resize (just a straight 720x480). So, if you can get all of your pictures looking normal at 640x480, either by cropping or adding black bars to them, or both, the rest of it is easy. FitCD will even tell you how to add the black bars. If you can give me examples of the resolutions of some of the pictures, I can walk you through it.

[cyberbob25]

Thank you very much for your help! Before you typed your response, I also had figured it out in TMPGENC (just setting the source aspect ratio to 1:1 whlie leaving destination at 4:3), but I much prefer CCE, and I got it to work the way you described with FixCD.

All of your help is very much appreciated.