This is a problem I am facing now on some of the films I author for my own private use. After I bought a new 16:9 plasma screen I find that many of my films, which are 16:9 letterboxed, can't be shown as full 16:9. Is there a way to convert them to full 16:9?
All my widescreen movies are marked letterboxed. Do you mean the difference between 2.35:1 and 1.78:1 where some have small black bars on the top and bottom or do you mean 4:3 letterboxed where there are black bars on all 4 sides?
Sorry, I think I am mixing up or misexplaining what I want to do. Zooming in on the DVD player does not quite do what I want, as it cuts off part of the frame. The images I have on some movies are 4:3 with 16:9 or 2.35 frames inside, only with black bars up and below, not on the sides. Thinner bars in the first case, thicker in the second.
DVD Rebuilder Pro can do what you want. I think the free version can do it also. When you open Rebuilder and select your folder, you will see if the movie is 4:3. In the options there is a setting to change 4:3 to 16:9. If the movies are 16:9, you can put a line in the filter editor to give the results you want. For NTSC the line would be: LanczosResize(720, 480, 90, 60, 540, 360) For PAL: LanczosResize(720, 576, 90, 72, 540, 432) But be aware that you will be trimming 90 pixels of the picture from each of the two sides.
You mean that I will lose 180 pixels? That's too much. What does the program do? Zoom in? What I need is a program that would anamorphize the image and stretch it up and down, filling the 4:3 frame, becoming a regular 16:9 frame when seen by a 4:3 uncorrected screen. Isn't that what DVD Rebuilder does?
When you zoom in you're losing part of the picture. The only way is to try it and see if it's too your liking. Some players like mine, zooms in too much. You can't stretch what you have without some distortion.
Are your movies dvd or avi? If they are avi, you can use avidemux to crop the blackbars from the video, you shouldn't lose any part of the actual picture. If the the movie is a dvd, then the only way to fix it is with convertxtodvd. It will let you crop your 16:9 video so that the blackbars will disappear. Also it will let you to "stretch" the video so that it will fit the entire screen.
Most are DVD movies, that is vob files. For avi files I will from now on be very careful how I author them to they finish up in 16:9. To do that crop I would prefer Procode, which I think it's a bit better than Convert.
