I have recorded a movie (4:3) off a Sky decoder (PayTV) onto a HDD DVD recorder (Sony). I then dubbed it to DVD-RW. The Sky decoder is set to 16:9 so a 4:3 movie is viewed with black bars on the sides. The DVD recorder can't produce DVDs in 16:9 format, only 4:3, but playback on a 16:9 TV appears normal. I rip the DVD onto my PC to convert it into XviD but the frame size appears too narrow. The frame size after conversion is 528 x 512 which is narrow.

Is there any software that can stretch the width of the frame size back to proper 4:3 so no black bars on the sides on the DVD MPEG?

I plan to record more movies and convert them into Xvids.

If you have your dvd files in an ISO format, use the program fairuse wizard lite. Is has an excellent cropping section, it will show you how the video will look. All you need to do is cut out the black bars. And when you are ready to encode make sure you check the "use tv display mode" and you should get a good conversion.

http://www.fairusewizard.com/lang_en/fai...ht_edition.html

FairUse 2.8 was the software I used. The problem is that I have black bars on the sides of a 4:3 DVD not 16:9. What I see is a 4:3 frame with black bars on the sides and narrow video in the middle. The "Use TV Display Mode" only brings sizes with the height being larger.

Is there any way to make FairUse open the ISO as a 16:9 DVD not a 4:3 DVD?
Or is there a way of manually resizing the ouput frame size?

You have to crop out the black bars before you encode it,
sa stated by Jony218.

If a 4:3 movie fills the 720 x 576 frame (PAL). Then 720 - 200 = 520 and 576 - 200 = 376. So then 520 x 376 is still within the 4:3 aspect ratio. But the Xvid I get after cropping the black bars has the frame size 528 x 512 which is definetly not 4:3. It should be something like 528 x 384.

You're missing a step. Do the crop, followed by resize.
Resize it to 640*480, or 672/504 or similar. Then you'll get 4/3.

720/576 is not mathematically 4/3 as you can probably see.
The 576 is the imporatant part, it corresponds to the PAL line
definition.
The DVD player just stretches the 720 to fit. The confusion arises
because when you're dealing with SD mpg2, they are not square pixels.

Further evidence can be seen by the 1/2 res dvd standard,
352/576 (PAL) and 352/480 (NTSC) which also displays perfectly fine
and fills the 4/3 picture. It just has less horizontal detail,
that's all.

But those sizes are not availible after the cropping page. The options availible are all almost square sizes. They are not wide enough. The problem is that the input DVD's video is too narrow in the first place. Its a recording not a retail DVD.

Try using virtualdub (latest release) with FccHandlers mpeg 2 plugin.
You get full control to do everything.

If it's not helpful, create a small clip of the source as-is
and post it to a file hosting site so we can look at it.

As you can see, the video does not fill up all of the 4:3 screen.
Sorry for the late reply.

Note: You will need to right click / view image on the icon thx.

I saw the image and it's as I suspected.
I can see what needs to be done, but I've never used the
Fairuse wizard, so I can't advise you on it's capabilities.

As I mentioned before, it needs to be cropped, (as you have done)
then the remaining pixels "stretched" left to right.

Why don't you try virtualdub with FccHandlers mpeg 2 plugin
to see if it works for you?

My movie is on recorded on a DVD-RW and DVDFab HD Decrypter does recognise the disc. I can play the DVD though. FairUse can extract the video files but they can only be used in FairUse.
What is another DVD ripper good for DVD-/+RWs?

Hello pcaddict -
Your recorded dvd is not content protected in anyway, is it?
Just copy the video_ts folder to your harddrive.

Open the folder in my computer or explorer and check the files
in details view. There should be some big *.vob files, that's the main
movie.

Give it a try and see what you have.
You still want to convert the main movie to avi ?

I copied the files to my HDD using windows explorer. Would there be any ways to fix the DVD structure files so the DVD becomes 16:9 anamorphic and not 4:3? A fix for the IFOs and BUPs or simular?

There are some tools, such as Ifoedit, and another thing that can change
the fields in the mpeg header. I don't think it will help.
You actually have the black bars (left and right) encoded in the video.
Drag one of the main movie VOB's onto virtualdub and see what I mean.

Once you do that, you'll see how easy it is to crop and resize.

VOBs are in 1GB segments. How do you join them in VirtualDub?

You could use something like DGindex. This program acts as a frame
server. It "serves" the connected VOB's, so that they appear as one file.

Alternatively, it may be possible to encode each VOB separately
to AVI, and as long as you use the same attributes, you can
join all the avi files (in Virtualdub) once they're complete.

I gave womble a go but the output is not the the cropped preview. It can join VOBs and MPEGs though.

Womble joined the VOBs together. In VirtualDub, I selected the cropping to be done. For the resize I keyed in 640 x 496 (PAL). Should I select any of the other options in the resize window?

Not really, I normally choose "disabled" under "aspect ratio",
and I set "newsize" "absolute" and type in the exact numbers I want.

You can choose "codec friendly" and perhaps multiple of 4.

Are you trying to recreate the content true A/R ratio (by this I mean
the A/R such that a circle appears as a circle and not as an egg
either on its side or upright) for viewing on your PC, or are you going to watch it on a divx-enabled dvd player ?

I plan to make DVD(s) with 6 XviD recorded movies on it as I think it is a waste for a recorded quality movie to use up a whole disc. They are to be viewed through a DVD player (DivX Ultra) on my TV (16:9).

You'll have to experiment, but the firmware/video chip in DVD
players behave differently.
In mine, if I want to watch at the correct A/R,
I have to encode the AVI file with square pixels.
That is, what you see is what you get. If it look rights in
Virtualdub, it plays right on the TV.

Good Luck -

In Womble Video Wizard the VOBs can be exported as 16:9 by stretching it, but outputs as a MPEG.
All I need is a program that can build a DVD structure without re-encoding into an ISO image file. Nero can make an NRG image file without re-encoding which I don't think works with FairUse Wizard.

What other software can build dvd structures from MPEGs without re-encoding?

Doesn't Nero give you a choice of NRG *OR* ISO ?

Not in Nero Vision.