Converting widescreen format to 15:9

[noels]

I have several DVDs of widescreen format that leave "black bars" above and below the picture on my 30" HDTV screen. Is there a good (preferably freeware) program that I can use to do a conversion to (I believe) 15:9 to fill the screen without omitting anything? Thanks

[nwg]

The reason you still have black borders is the ratio is is known as 2.35:1. A DVD that is 1.85:1 or 1:78:1 will fill the screen. It is how it is supposed to be.

Even if you made the picture fill the screen. It will cut of a bit at the sides so you will actually see less.

[noels]

nwg, thank you for your answer... on my TV, I can select DVD scaling of aspect ratios with names such as "panoramic", "fill-all," etc, but not by ratios specifically, so I don't know what those various ratios are. But, the TV still will not allow me to fill my screen when I use a widescreen video, even by cutting off some of the sides. I would still like to convert those DVDs to a different ratio from the given 1.85:1 or 1.78:1 that you told me about to something like 1.66:1 if possible. Can I do that? How?

[nwg]

If you have a widescreen TV then they usually have a zoom mode which will fill the screen and cut the sides off. If a DVD is 1:85 or 1:78:1 then it will fill the screen.

The only way to change the ratio is to re-encode it. The easiest way is to try a trial of the TMPGenc Encoder. However, you may find it doesn't recognise the audio without spending money on the Dolby Digital audio plugin.

Someone else may be able to help you more as I have never had the need to do it. I watch the DVD's as they are supposed to be seen. The TV and DVD player is normally on 16:9 or wide mode.

[noels]

nwg, thanks again! It may be too difficult to fool around with, so I may just give up on this one.

[blutach]

Couple of things you might try:

Change the attributes of the titleset to Pan & Scan. In PgcEdit, find the movie (its in a VTST and its time will be apparent). Right click on the PGC and select Domain Streams Attributes. In the video attributes section, tick Automatic P&S (and make sure 16:9 is selected).

The other thing you can try is to re-encode with DVD Rebuilder. If your movie is 4:3 hard matted, it can convert this to true 16:9 anamorphic.

Regards

[anonymez]

i hate all those extreme wide formats we all bought wide screen tv's/monitors so that we can watch our movies without black bars.

why can't they all just get along?



still, i wouldn't make mutant backups of half the dvd's i own

[blutach]

I'd rather see everything that was on the movie than have a whole lot of it chopped off so I can get "value for money on my TV".

I consider Pan & Scan a blight on DVD.

Regards

[anonymez]

what i want is 'value for money' on my hdtv card. they are showing 'gladiator' right now in brisbane, IN 4:3 !!

and yet they were able to get 'charlie and the chocolate factory', the one made in the '70's, in amazing widescreen HD (1920x1088). i recorded it, removed the ch9 watermark and it looks 100 times better than the dvd

[blutach]

Yeah, we got Gladiator here too. Not watching it in the home cinema. Perhaps on HDTV it's being shown in WS.

Regards

[anonymez]

hdtv and sdtv streams have exactly the same content, just the res, bitrate, audio, etc. differ. when there is nothing in native hd being broadcasted, the HD channel is just upconverted stuff, and usually looks worse and much more grainy on my monitor than the SD stuff.

the hd channel is just awful, i can assure you . luckily i own the dvd though

ch10 is just being cheap

[blutach]

Yeah, I have noticed it is only good for native HD stuff. It's supposed to be all HD in a few years, isn't it?

And yes, 10 used to be the leader (with 7 being worst) but I'm not sure 10 cares too much. They are compliant and that's all they need to be.

Regards

[noels]

blutach, thanks for your comments. Turns out for me it was a function of the DVD player and not the DVD - last night I decided to double check my situation with both of my DVD players... I put a widescreen DVD in my recording DVD player (hooked up via the YCbCr ports to my TV) and was able to zoom the pic to fill the screen, BUT when using a different DVD player (my non-recording DVD player hooked up to the S-Video ports to the TV), it would not zoom to full screen. Still not sure if its the difference in ports or the DVD players. So I'm scratching my head at this point. Bottom line, I guess I don't really have a problem after all - I just need to use the right DVD player... Thanks to all of you for your suggestions.

[blutach]

Yes, I saw your reply to a similar thread at doom9 in the rebuilder forum.

Do take note of what was said afterwards though (same as nwg in the first reply to your post).

Regards

[ger@co]

@ noels. Check out this site for a more information on widescreen. Once you've read it, I'm sure you'll change your mind about converting to fullscreen.

Later.