Resizing an avi

Hi can anyone give me some pointers on how i can resize a downloaded avi to play in my toshiba dvd player, when i download an avi usually the size is 640x272 which is fine in vlc player, but when i play it in my dvd player to play thru my Tv it shows up in a smaller rectangle box within the tv screen you can zoom it but it takes away some of the quality i know i can convert it to dvd but i am wondering what i can possibly do to keep it as a divx file but change it so it plays on my dvd player as say 16:9 instead of the smaller rectangle box within the screen thx in advance

 

640x272 is an aspect ratio of 2.352:1

If it looks ok on the PC, then resizing it to a 16:9 AR would only stretch it vertically.
You could add black bars, top and bottom of 44 pixels each which would be 640x360, that letterboxes it to 16:9.

VirtualDub and AviDemux (illustrated) can do this.

 

I've done a few of these, but my method is slightly different from attar's.

I usually use Virtualdub (but avidemux can also be used).
The first thing I do is to crop 16 off of each side, so it becomes
608*272.

Then I stretch it top to bottom by 32, so the new size is 608/304 (2.0 ratio)
not quite 16/9 but much better than 2.35 on a small(ish) TV.

Once you accept that the only way to make it "bigger" is with a certain amount of
cropping and/or stretching, it's really up to you how far to push it.

 

Pic from TV using both methods.
Top is letterboxed, lower is full screen.
The circle is stretched slightly and some loss on L&R of screen.

@davexnet, does adding the letterbox (as opposed to cropping/resizing) speed up recoding - because it's black?
I seldom recode downloads since it's normally view once and toss.

 

You mean the black bars method is quicker than the crop/resize?
Possibly a little - I can't try it at the moment but I will later.

I don't think the fact that it's black is that relevant - I just think there's
less computational power involved in adding the borders Vs. crop/resize.
(Of course, I could be wrong!)

 

Thx for the replies but as a complete novice at this i'm not sure what to do i tried using virtual dub but when i resized it or so i thought it woul'dnt apply the changes as the box stayed greyed out for apply i tried it anyway but it still came out as 640x272 obviously i am doing something wrong i take it when it is resized the new file will say the new file size also i'm not sure what to do with the cropping aspect as well hopefully ah'll get it some time before chroistmas lol thx again lads

 

If you wish to make it 16:9 letterbox, use the Resize Filter:



If you want to crop and resize, use the Null filter to crop then use the resize filter:
In either case, select a suitable compression method (XviD) before saving.