Letterbox(24, 24, 16, 16) will not effect your top/bottom borders for a
widescreen movie (GripBoders will already add the necessary borders
which are much higher...see Addborders()-line in Moviestackers avi-script)

overscan will only effect the left/right borders, if you really like to
reduce your movie-height even more than done with overscan=2, you
can try to Letterbox(xx, xx, 0, 0) before your GripCrop() line...
for xx-values look at TMPEnc's Clip frame cut the black borders and
encrease the values for top/bottom by your desired values...so maybe
Letterbox(top+24, bottom+24, 16, 16) will do what you want.

regards, ***mfb***

Yes, mfb is right, but doing this way you will be actually cutting of VISIBLE film pixels from the top and bottom of your movie. Is this really what you wanna do

MFB, many thanks for pointing me towards TMPG's Clip Frame function...it really helped.



Well, NO, of course I didn't want to do it, but I hate 2-disc encodes and wanted to squeeze a ~ 2hours and 15minutes widescreen movie with a 1.85:1 Aspect-Ratio onto a single 80-minute disc while using a 544x480 resolution and a 29.97fps framerate (pretty tough to do at an acceptable quality). I had already used as much extra filtering and tweaks to the "Optimal Script" as I could tolerate. By trimming 1 extra block from the top and bottom of the visible movie, I was able to fit the movie on 1 disc with 112kbps audio and a CQ of 52 (which is more or less as low as I'll personally tolerate while using the x3 resolution). I could have dropped to 480x480 resolution, but it only would have raised the CQ to ~56 and it didn't really look any better to me, and there also really wasn't anything too vital happening in the movie in those extra pixels I trimmed off (if the AR of the movie was 2.35:1, then I certainly wouldn't have tried doing this, but I figured I could get away with it on a 1.85:1 film ) Anyways, it worked for me in this particular instance...I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone though unless in the most dire need of extra compression.

Regards,
-d&c

Hey Dazed&Confused!

don't do it that way... Use Overscan=2 and add this line to the end of your script: Letterbox(0,0,24,24)
This will give you an Overscan of 2 for the height (without cutting out visible pixel) and 24 pixel blackened out on the sides, which is equal to Overscan=3.
And no visible pixel will be affected!

__________________
j3llyG0053

Hi JellyGoose,

Thanks for the advice, but when I use Overscan=3 I can see a black border along the right hand side of my TV screen, so I can't use Letterbox(0,0,24,24)....the highest "overlap" I've tried successfully (without creating a black border) is Letterbox(0,0,20,20). That's why I was looking for a way to reduce the height some more, but not the sides. As I said, I had already used all the extra filters I could tolerate, and I didn't want to drop down my resolution, so I tried something unconventional (but it wasn't too bad because I only trimmed a little bit of the movie off, and it didn't make the movie unwatchable in any way, nor did it remove any vital parts of the movie). Like I said, it's not something I would have done if I wasn't in such desperate need of just a little more space so I could raise my CQ (you see, without trimming the visible pixels off, I would have had to use a CQ that was 40-something....and I ended up using CQ52, which is much closer to my personal minimum preference). So I was happy with the results in this one case...I needed to do this to be able to fit that many minutes onto my disc with 544x480 rez and 29.97fps framerate.

Just so you know, I used Letterbox before my GripCrop(544, 480, overscan=2) line to trim 1 block worth of pixels from the top and bottom of the movie, and I also used Letterbox(0,0,20,20) at the end of my script. The resulting kvcd actually looks quite good(even with CQ52) and I see no borders on the sides of my TV. So I'm a happy camper!

Regards,
-d&c

Hi d&c,

Glad to hear you are happy with the results.
Just wanna give you a little advice. The correct place to put any black border is in the end of your script. This way the other filters will not mess with the borders turning it into a not pure black, and wasting some little bitrate. So, the last Letterbox(0,0,20,20) could be Letterbox(112,112,20,20). (just an example )

Thanks for the advice muaddib! I'll definetly make sure I remember it for the next rainy day (and boy, do I hate those rainy days when they come! ). I used Letterbox(16,16,0,0) (at least, I think those were the values) before my GripCrop line because I figured GripCrop would detect these black borders and then trim them off anyways, so then maybe the encode would go faster due to there being less pixels for the other filters to work on. I don't know if this actually was the case or not though because I didn't do a time comparison.

All I know is I hope I never need to trim any visible pixels again to fit a long movie onto 1 disc, because 1) cutting visible pixels is not the greatest thing to do, plus 2) it's a pain in the butt! I like being able to just use GripCrop(544, 480, overscan=2) and be done with it.

Thanks again everyone,
-d&c