How to convert Widescreen DVD to fullscreen?

[jbrice]

My goal is simple, or so I thought. I have "City of Angels" DVD in widescreen only, but since I don't have a widescreen tv, I want to convert it to full screen while backing up the DVD. Easy right? Wrong! Can anyone help?

Here are the steps I have taken:

1. Use Smartripper to backup all files to my hard drive.

2. Try to use IFOEdit since that is the easiest way. I followed the guides: Strip out the movie only, one video stream and one audio .ac3 stream. This works perfectly, I test my stripped out movie, play the .IFO in PowerDVD and it looks great EXCEPT of course it's still widescreen and I want fullscreen.

3. So I try to use TMPGEnc to resize my video. TMPGEnc just freezes on me (for one hour) when I try to load in the TmpgTemplate.txt file created from IFOEdit, so that's not going to work. So I try to skip this step and give up on IFOEdit, realizing I have to re-author. In TMPGEnc I choose "Detect Scene change" instead of "Force Picture Type Setting" <-- since that setting freezes TMPGEnc.

4. TMPGEnc makes a beautiful .M2V file in fullscreen just like I want! But without sound, since TMPGEnc will not take .AC3 audio as input. However, that's okay, because I used DVD2AVI to strip out my .AC3 file. Now I just need to remux my perfect .M2V and my .AC3.

5. I use TMPGEnc Tools, and try to remux them. Sometimes the video and audio are out of sync, but finally after several tries they are in sync. Hooray! But now, I have an .MPG file that plays perfectly (video and sound), how do I get it back into .VOBs?

6. I have DVD Junior which I usually use for converting .MPG to DVD, but it hates this .MPG file that TMPGEnc has produced. DVD Junior takes the .MPG file, and immediately says "this is a program stream, I am going to convert it to .VOB" then it DEMUXES, and then it REMUXES again, producing a huge .VOB file. When I try to play this new .VOB file in DVD Player it looks terrible ... it is very choppy and the audio is completely out of sync.

So that's my story ... can anyone suggest how I get this .MPG file that TMPGEnc made (which seems to be good) converted to DVD format? Why does DVD Junior turn it into garbage? Is there some other magic tool which can just convert from wide to full screen (boy that would be sweet) Thanks!

[setarip]

"But now, I have an .MPG file that plays perfectly (video and sound), how do I get it back into .VOBs?"

You'l like this...

Since you did multiplex an MPEG2 (.m2v) video with an AC3 audio stream, simply change the extender from ".MPG" to ".VOB" ;>}

The .VOB format is nothing more than a subset of MPEG2 format - and you've met all of the requirements.

Let us know of your success ;>}

[jbrice]

Thanks for reply, I tried that before, but then I have one huge 4G B VOB. I tried to load this VOB into DVD JR and it says, "This is a program stream, I'm going to convert it to VOB." Somehow DVD JR knows it's not a "real" vob ??

[setarip]

I'm not personally familiar with DVD Jr., but perhaps this "junior" version requires that you feed it .VOBs no larger than 0.99Gigs(1,048.5Mgs). If that's the case, simply use VobCutter to "slice and dice" to the appropriate sizes...

[jbrice]

Thanks, but DVD Jr. can load big VOBs, it's done so with other movies. The problem is no matter how I convert the video to "full screen", after the video is transcoded it will no longer remux properly with the original .ac3 file. The newly sized video (.M2V) is always out of sync with audio (.AC3) after they are re-muxed.

Is there any encoder which accepts .AC3 and will encode with this Dolby 6-channel audio? TMPG does not accept .AC3. Is there any encoder that does? Because encoding the video, and THEN trying to re-mux the .ac3 back in, does not seem to work, it's always out of sync with the audio. Aaagg!

[setarip]

"TMPG does not accept .AC3."

You are mistaken. TMPGEnc will gladly accept a "clean" (you may have to delete the header from 00-02D) .AC3 audio stream for multiplexing with a video file in .m2v format.

You do know that you have to do the following under TMPGEnc to accomplish this:

File>>MPEGTools>>Multiplex (or Simple Multiplex). Make certain to set mode to MPEG2

P.S. Just curious - Why does the nature of your difficulty seem to be changing with each post?

[jbrice]

Setarip, I appreciate your help, thanks a lot. You're right, I'm aksing too many vague and varying questions ... that's because I'm trying so many different things! My original hope was to use IFOEdit and not have to do any re-authoring, but I've given up on that method.

Let me try to be more specific here, this is where I am now stuck:

1. SmartRipper: strip the movie. Now I have a large .M2V and an .AC3.

2. TMPGEnc: Open the .M2V. I would also like to be able to open the .AC3 as the audio file, but TMPGEnc won't accept it. "Not supported." So, I choose "Video Only." In the settings, for "Video Arrange Method" I put "Full Screen". I push start, and after 5 hours I have a very nice .M2V file in full screen.

3. TMPGEnc: Under MPEG Tools / Multiplex, I MUX together this new fullscreen .M2V with the .AC3 file that Smartripper gave me. Now I have an .MPG file and it is perfect, with video and sound, and in fullscreen.

4. Now comes the trouble. I want to burn this onto a DVD-R. DVD Junior: I feed it the .MPG, but it produces a .VOB that plays choppy and out of sync (video and audio). If I rename the .MPG to .VOB and try to feed the .VOB to DVD Junior, it doesn't make any difference, DVD Junior produces the exact same out of sync output. Okay, I've been reading other posts saying SpruceUp is a good tool so I'll try that next. Maybe DVD Junior just doesn't do what I want? I'll post again with my resulsts from using SpruceUp.

[setarip]

My pleasure ;>}

In my previous post, I indicated the following:
"TMPGEnc will gladly accept a "clean" (you may have to delete the header from 00-02D) .AC3 audio stream"

Have you attempted to clean up the AC3 file?

If that's just not your cup of tea then, rather than first multiplexing using TMPGEnc, doesn't DVD Junior offer this capability (as does DVDWise and, I'm sure, most other authoring software)? If so, perhaps it may do a better job of synchronizing when dealing with files that IT has multiplexed...

[jbrice]

Can you please give instructions on how to edit the .AC3? I don't have experience with this.

To answer your other question, if I just feed the .M2V and .AC3 directly to DVD Junior, then my video won't be at full screen, which is my primary reason for doing all this in the first place!
That's why I'm using TMPGEnc, to resize the video to Full Screen.

By the way, just as an experiment, I tried feeding the .M2V and .AC3 directly to DVD Junior and guess what? It produced the same kind of choppy out-of-sync output! Now I'm wondering if this is a special video with Interlacing or something like that? I know there are NOT multiple angles in this Title, but I'm not sure how to look for Interlacing or anything else that might make it problematic. Any suggestions there? Thanks as always.

[setarip]

"That's why I'm using TMPGEnc, to resize the video to Full Screen."

I was referring to multiplexing an already-resized-by-TMPGEnc-(silent) video with the AC3 file.

"Can you please give instructions on how to edit the .AC3? I don't have experience with this."

You load the file into what's known as a hex editor and use the hex editor just as you would a text editor. In this case, you would highlight the first 02D (hexadecimal) bytes and delete them. Then save the file. IMPORTANT!!! Make certain to keep a backup copy of the AC3 file before you do this, as some hex editors will automatically save (overwrite) with the original filename. If you're uncomfortable with this, then don't attempt it.

The more I read of your posts, the more evident it becomes that DVD Junior is at fault - it's either problematic, or you've got an incorrect setting for it. At this stage, you're probably better off following your instinct by checking out some other authoring software - particularly those that WILL accept the MPEG2/".VOB" directly.

[jbrice]

OK, here's the next obvious question: Why take the first part off the .AC3? What exactly is this thing I need to remove?

[setarip]

It's a WAV header (from hexadecimal 000 through 02D) that's sometimes added by the program used to extract the .AC3 audio stream - a header which causes TMPGEnc to reject it as "not being an AC3 audio stream".

Of course, it's always prudent to first make a backup copy of your file.

[bigtoe_rudy]

Replacing widescreen movie with fullscreen

Hi,
This is my first time here. I know this post is rather old, but I may have found a easier way to do this in ifoedit. I was surfing the posts and started one at doom9.org. 2 Cool was the one that helped me a lot with this problem. If you are interrested in changing the widescreen movie without disrupting the dvd structure..try this:

1. Open the ifo of the movie in ifoedit
2. In VTS overview-scroll down to the tile set of your movie-double click on the video line
3. change your aspect ratio to 4:3 and static to auto. pan & scan-OK
4. Save ifo to same ifo you opened
5. Then go to VIDEO_TS and open it- do the same procedure-save
6. test with your dvd software

NOTE: I tested four movies with this procedure being successful for 1 of the 4.

NOW: My problem is: How can I get the other three movies to work out like the 1 did??? All four are widescreen, but when tested or burned to disc..still looks like 16:9 format.

Any help would be appreciated!!! Thanks Everyone!!!

[ashy]

You can't just change the aspect ratio setting in the IFO and expect it to become a real 4:3 image.

The result will simply be a 16:9 image stretched to become 4:3 which will distort the image as it will become elongated.

The only way to make a 16:9 movie true 4:3 is to re-encode it.

You say you have managed to get one movie to become 4:3, but I suspect it is somehow distorted because it will now have an incorrect aspect ratio.

[bigtoe_rudy]

Ok, I know how to rencode it and also convert to dvd format. But once I get the vts files how can I replace it in the orginal format to work properly??? Thanks for your help!


Rudy