Letterbox Encoding and PAR Question

[gte024h]

Question 1: Is XviD smart enough to detect letterboxing and not waste bits on it?

Question 2: Should I be using the pixel aspect ratio (PAR) flag to encode my DVD's as 720x480 but have them playback at 720x404 (16:9)? Media Player Classic seems to handle the PAR, but only after the movie is paused then restarted. Is the PAR flag a standard that people will start using, or should I always encode with square pixels?

The reason I ask these questions is that I spend some time cropping and resizing my DVD rips which usually reduces the resolution and wastes CPU time. So I was thinking I would leave the video at full resolution and leave in the letterboxing, then set the PAR to either 16:9 or 4:3 (depending on the DVD). Not sure if this is a good idea or not, that's why I's asking.

One other question... if I have a really badly telecined clip that's just impossiable to properly IVTC, should I encode it interlaced (check the interlaced box in the XviD settings)? Of course the best answer is to try and see, but maybe someone here has experience with this and could tell me before I waste more CPU time.

[gte024h]

Any ideas... any at all?

[Leo 69]

Check out the SeeMoreDigital's site. I think it's worth that :

http://seemoredigital.net/03_Video_Only_Info/What_is_an_anamorphic_encode.html

if I have a really badly telecined clip that's just impossiable to properly IVTC

I know it sounds a bit weird, but try the latest AGK, it'll probably cope with that somehow on its own. Don't know how, though...

[pelle412]

I recommend cropping off the black bars around the movie and encoding with correct picture aspect ratio. Including the black bars in the encode is a waste of bits.

[jon.schaffer]

[a bit OT?]
Encoding the black bars themselves does not waste much bits. But encoding the junction between picture and black borders does... (unless blocks match perfectly with the picture limit?)
[/OT]

EDIT: typos

[gte024h]

jon.schaffer: That's what I was wanting to know, thanks!

I suppose that's why it is better to crop a few pixels into the picture than to leave a sliver of black around the edge?

So cropped with square pixels is "the way" then since MPEG4 in AVI does a poor job with non-square PAR? If I started using the MPEG4 container instead of AVI, would that be better?

The bad clips I was talking about are hard telecined (multiple times) so there's field blending all over. I doubt AGK can do much about that, probably the best thing I could do would be to find better releases of the DVD.