I've been trying to get copies of my dvd collection converted to play on my Zune, and its been a frustrating experience to say the least. I really want to just use Windows Media Encoder, but apparently you cant directly convert a VOB file from dvd shrink to a WMV file... which just seems stupid, but its not one of the selectable formats for input, and if i choose all files and open it that way, it always gives me messages about missing a codec or it crashes so i have been trying various pay programs, their trials anyway. Most of them seem to want to use the screen size of 320x240 as default. However someone said that for widescreen content you want to input a custom size based on the ratio (even thought the zune screen is already small, i cant stand full screen movies so im still willing to have the letterboxing) Right now im trying to do the matrix, according to IMDB its 2.35:1 aspect ratio. the actual video size is 720 x 480. Someone said to divide those numbers and you get 1.5. So then to get the correct zune size, you would do 320 as the width, and for the height you divide 240 by 1.5 to get 2.13, round up to 2.14 does that make any sense? also, a lot of these programs such as IMTOO, Xilisoft, etc, have two options. One is for video size, the other called "zoom" which has options for full, letterbox, pan and scan, etc if i set the screen size to 320x214, would i still have the letterbox selected?
Actually, is 2.35:1 considered a 16x9 aspect ratio? this whole thing is just so confusing im using Cucusoft and the only other option besides 320x240 is 320x180 the only other thing i could think of is not use the zune preset config, select WMV and that allows me to input any custom size i want i mean, maybe selecting 320x240 is just fine, maybe cucusoft automatically takes care of the rest, i cant tell... i mean things dont look too stretched to me, but it doesnt seem as wide as when i watch it on my 4:3 tv (zunes screen is 4:3)
*All* NTSC dvd's are 720*480. What is the resolution of the Zune? 2.35:1 is not really considered 16/9. It's wider, as you can probably guess. On DVD's, you can get the same movies letterboxed, letterboxed for widescreen TV (anamorphically encoded) or Full screen. To a certain extent, you have to consider that when you encode them. As the Matrix is 2.35:1, and if the proper side-to-side resolution of the Zune is 320, then 320/2.35 = 136. So 320/136 should be close to what you want.
The resolution of the Zune is 320x240 so 136? that sounds better than the 214 i somehow came up with thank you for that my last question, how can i tell if its anamorphic or not? and if it IS anamorphic, does that change anything with how i should encode it (screen size) thanks again your help is greatly appreciated
when you get the DVD VOB file(s) in the computer, open them with Gspot. On the lower right it should say whether the DAR is 4:3 or 16:9. It may not make a difference, depending on the encoding method. If you can set the output res specifically using a calculation where you know the movies aspect ratio (like we did above) you should be OK. Give it a try. If it doesn't work, a more detailed look at your workflow may be necessary.
