cropping 16:9 digtial TV recordings to 4:3

[craig procter]

Hi all,

normally Iuse Gordian Knot to encode my XVIDs, but I'm having a few problems with widescreen digital TV recordings, which have the side black bars (source video is 4:3 aspect ratio).

Can anyone share their experiences/knowledge with cropping and resizing 16:9 video to 4:3 please?

cheers,

Craig

[StormyKnight]

Basically, you have a 4:3 picture in the middle of a 16:9 is that right & you want to remove the bars & re-encode?

If so, I would use virtualdub (or an offshoot version), under

Video
Filters
add null transform

Then the cropping button becomes active. You can then set your crop to remove the bars. Set your audio to direct stream if you do not need to re-encode & set your preferred video encoder & away you go.

[craig procter]

Thanks StormyKnight,

yes, the source is 720x576 widescreen PAL (it's a digital TV recording) and has the side black bars encoded into the picture.

I want to crop the side bars and save it out as a 720x576 (so I think I need to use a resize in there as well) 4:3 aspect ratio PAL video encoded with XVID.

cheers,
Craig

[davidf]

Thanks StormyKnight,

yes, the source is 720x576 widescreen PAL (it's a digital TV recording) and has the side black bars encoded into the picture.

I want to crop the side bars and save it out as a 720x576 (so I think I need to use a resize in there as well) 4:3 aspect ratio PAL video encoded with XVID.

cheers,
Craig

Usually digital recordings with side bar are effectively 4:3 images as there is both side and top bars added (640*480 actual image) you need to crop to the 640*480 image then resize to 720*576 only if you want to save as a dvd mpeg2 format. If you are saving as an SVCD or AVI file the image will automatically resize to the screen so you don't need to resize just crop the image.