I have a movie in Xvid 640x272 with AC3 audio. That's in 2.35:1 widescreen if I'm not mistaken. What I want to do is add black bars to the top and bottom of the picture thus making it 16:9 (1.85:1). I want to keep the original picture as it was, not stretch it or anything like that.
I know what you mean bro' Actually, 2.35:1 sucks and makes poor use of the 35mm or 70mm film frame size. This goes back to the 60's (if not the 50's) and Super Cinemascope and Ultra Panavision aspect ratios far beyond 2.35:1! These suck for video purposes and are a real problem even for modern theatres to project these days. There is a new movement among film directors to frame at 1.85:1 (Saving Private Ryan)or even 1.77:1 (The Recruit) and this is great for 1.33:1 TV screens, uses more of the 35mm film, and doesn't hurt a transfer to the IMAX standard either! To transfer a really wide film to IMAX they have to do what you will have to do with your film: crop away some L and R. You can't add black bars to your film - 640x272 plus the black bars will already give you 1.333:1 like a std TV or PC monitor. What YOU want is 640x352, but you have only 640x272. You cannot increase the height, only crop to 512x272 (which is approx. the same). Hope this helps... ?
It's OK - Apparantly you can increase the height with TMPGenc - which then makes it into a VCD compliant MPEG - which is what i wanted to do with the video. So it's sorted
