Adding Black Borders to avi FIles

[futurex]

Hi all,

is there any way to add black borders/bars to the top and bottom of an avi file without re-encoding it?

the only way i know how is using virtualdubmod's resize feature, and expanding the frame. this needs re-encoding, and is very time consuming, even at single pass xvid, all settings set so it goest at max speed, even when encoding to uncompressed avi.

any help?

[E-Male]

in some players, like MPC, you can change the size of teh video in fullscreen mode
so you'd have black bars around

[DigitalDeviant]

I think ffdshow can add boarders during playback.

[futurex]

thanks for the help guys,

but i need the black borders in the actual file, not just for playback, because i want to watch a widescreen movie on a 4:3 screen on a handheld device.

and that is the only way to get the correct aspect ratio :)

[celtic_druid]

Then the answer is no. You need to re-encode.

[futurex]

is there a fast way though? (at least real-time)

which codec can do it fastest? i have tried xvid single pass, and only get ~10fps. size does not matter, as i plan on re-encoding again...

this problem would not exist if 'windows media encoder' had an option to add black borders :angry:

[celtic_druid]

Frameserve to WME via AVISynth.

[Lester Burnham]

thanks for the help guys,

but i need the black borders in the actual file, not just for playback, because i want to watch a widescreen movie on a 4:3 screen on a handheld device.

and that is the only way to get the correct aspect ratio :)

Just out of interest - which handheld device?

I watch widescreen stuff (converted from my own DVDs) on my Archos AV440, and that has any black borders cropped at conversion time.

When I watch on the AV440s screen, I use a particular viewing setting so I see the proper aspect ratio - but when I use the cradle to connect to a TV, I can leave it with the default.

I'm curious about the device you're using, and whether it has any aspect ratio settings for playback?

[futurex]

its a cellphone, so it doesn't have any real settings ;)

[vocoder]

I guess adding black borders in would consume less BW than reencoding existing borders. Would be best to crop and add in the borders artificially.

[chilledoutuk]

personally i prefer to just crop the borders off completely and set the par acordingly so that the picture is displayed in aspect.

[futurex]

the borders have already been cropped off. my source is an xvid movie that i encoded myself from one of my dvd's.

i don't think my cellphone would read the aspect ratio info. to play video, you must follow strict guidelines, such as resolution must be 176x144, 15fps, max bitrate 200kbps, etc.

"Frameserve to WME via AVISynth"

how would i go about doing that?

[[)370|\|470!2]

Create .avs text file with desired parameters, then feed it to WME.
If you new to AVISynth — read guide, it's very detailed.

[futurex]

thanks, will do :)