Quantcast Best Settings for Encoding Letterbox Captures? - digitalFAQ.com Forums [Archives]
  #1  
06-30-2002, 09:55 PM
gvarney gvarney is offline
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Hi,
I posted this over in the Video Capture area on an existing thread, but it probably belongs here anyway. If anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd appreciate some input.

Here is part of the thread that Kwag posted:

Quote:
Originally Posted by kwag
Isn't this a great "hair pulling" topic
This is what I did, as an example, from a captured clip.
I captured an anamorphic DVD "The Green Mile" via S-Video with my WinTV GO card.
I open the AVI with FitCD and set the input aspect to 1:1 640x480, which is the resolution I captured. I also checked "Anamorphic" on input, to get the correct borders added. FitCD calculated a resize of 352x360 for a destination of 352x480 and AddBorders(0,64,0,56). Now these black borders are "dirty", because they will not be black on your final mpeg. This is what you do:
I open the .avs with TMPEG, and I change the input aspect to center(352x360) from the information given above by FitCD. Go to clip and crop the image by clipping the top black and bottom black bars. The resul will be that you see the complete frame without black bars. Now encode and look at your output. It should be a perfect aspect ratio with nice and clean black bars.

kwag
So, based on all this, here is what I posted: (For Kwag, but I know he's been busy, so if anyone else has answers....)

OK, I am still confused, can you believe it?

This could get long, but let me take you through another one I'm trying to do. I am a little confused by some of your settings described above.

Here's what I've done:

I captured off DishNetwork Apocalypse Now Redux at 352x480 29.97fps MPEG2 4Mbps

I ran DVD2AVI. Here I can see this film is letterboxed. I used the CLIP tool to resize the picture. I saved the project.
1st question: Should I *not* clip the "borders"?

Opened project in FitCD.
2nd question: For your *capture* or the DVD of "The Green Mile" you chose 1:1 and anomorphic. What should I do for this capture? It seems like the "resize" that is calculated for this comes out to 228x480 or something weird.
I also selected to "format conversion" to get the output to 352x576 (1/2 DVD). (I'm using that trick for my Apex to play 23.97fps).
Saved the AVS (tried both anamorphic and not, 1:1 and *actual* capture size of 1/2 DVD).

Now, to TMPGenc:
3rd question: Since I have loaded the KVCD NTSC(Film) template but have changed the video size to 352x576, what adustments do I need to make in regard to aspect ratios, etc.?

Another thing that I am a little confused about is the CLIP FRAME and Center (custom size). Depending on what I did with FitCD (trying to remember this, not at home right now) I think I would get a "preview" in the CLIP FRAME that either had borders top and bottom or didn't. If it didn't, I couldn't add them. You stated above that you used a custom size of what FitCD told you. But...

4th question: if I have a full screen preview showing black borders top and bottom (which I can "overwrite" with the clip frame, then my aspect must be 352*576, right? But what does that do (576) to the aspect of the actual movie? It was capped in 352x480. If there are no borders showing (ie. just the 352*348 (that's what DVD2AVI had left after clipping), then how would I get that to center in a 352*576 screen and add the appropriate borders? (and, since the output is 352*576 instead of 352*480 would I need to scale the custom aspect (of the movie itself) up to 1.2 times or 352*418??) If I had been able to use the usual 480 vertical resolution the aspect part wouldn't seem to be as much of an issue.

Finally, can I encode only the actual movie and not the black bars, then have it display properly on my TV, in the center with proper aspect?

Now I've probably confused you too I just wanna get this stuff straight in my head so I can just capture, make project, make script, load, encode, be done with it. With full screen it is easier, but this letterboxing adds a new layer of confusion for me..

Thanks,
Geoff
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  #2  
07-27-2002, 08:10 PM
marko marko is offline
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Aspects of aspect ratios

Not quite an answer to your post but just to make the water muddier

Ihave similar probs using divx conversions and my solutions need to take account of the target viewscreen 16:9 and 4:3

Consider an original DVD aspect of 2.35:1 this is actually a 16:9 with bars top and bottom - to preserve the original aspect in AVI it must be encoded at 16:9 (using 2.35:1 does encode this aspect but because the source was 16:9 you end up with horizontal stretching including the black bars!!)

Using kwags truly excellent PLUS plate(TY forever kwag) (PAL for me) I leave the original bars in and use VGA 1:1 as video source, FULL SCREEN if the target is a widescreen TV (the vertical stretch is corrected in widescreen 16:9 mode -and there are more pixels/lines per frame) or FULL SCREEN PRESERVE ASPECT RATIO if the the target screen is 4:3

Note both these settings encode the Black Bars as well
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07-27-2002, 08:45 PM
marko marko is offline
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OOPs lost the thread a bit

If i clip the bars the vertical stretch makes the vcd not worth watching (much worse in 4:3)

If you only want to make 1 file for both widescreen and 4:3 use the 4:3 info in my last reply(less quality on widescreen - better than VHS tho - and the widescreen TV can still stretch vertically to provide full widescreen)

In conclusion , I live with black bars for now - till someone tells me how to get rid of them and maintain aspect perfectly
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