For some reason certain movies I have converted DVD Flick have black bars at the top and bottom of them, even when you change the aspect ratio in VLC. I don't have a widescreen tv currently ,but my dad's laptop is widescreen, and with most movies the 16:10 aspect ratio in VLC fills the entire screen. (Except for very small bits at the top/bottom.) With the Dark Knight which was an 8GB .mkv file converted to dvd it would view 16:10 like it was supposed on certain scenes, but maybe for five minutes max throughout the whole movie. Any idea as to why this is occurring? edit: Just found out that the black bars are called letterbox. Also I just converted the same Dark Knight file using ConvertXtoDVD and it has the same issue.
According to the Internet Movie Database, the Dark Knight has an aspect ration of 2.35:1 - which makes it wider that the 16:10 screen. It sounds like you're viewing it with the aspect ratio maintained, thus, you will get the black bars top and bottom, even on this W/S laptop. If you absolutely hate this letterboxing, you can convert it so that the bars are reduced. But to do so, something has to give. You either have to stretch the movie vertically (which makes things look tall and skinny) or you can actually remove material from the sides to make the movie less wide. Secondly, there may be a setting in VLC that will stretch it as it is viewed on the PC.
On convertx2dvd do following. This only works on the latest versions of convertx2dvd. It's a feature that's well hidden and requires many steps to get to. settings/video processing/video resize method/user : cropping and padding user defined. When back in the main menu click on the titleset #1 to expand it/video/video resize method/click on the user cropping arrow/next click on the tv screen icon next to green checkmark/ this opens up the cropping editor, just move the sliders to crop the black marks/ make sure you press the green checkmark to accept your cropping settings. Many time if you just use the "stretch method" in the video resize method will take care of the problem, it's only the rare videos that actually have the blackbars as part of the video that require cropping.
The "stretch method" will mess up the AR. 'Automatic' will narrow the top/bottom bars by cropping about 40px off the sides. 'Pan and Scan' will completely eliminate the bars. Either of these choices will maintain correct AR.
