True Widescreen Settings Help Requested

[Bubsy007]

Hi,

Please can someone explain to me the Cropping option, i.e. does cropping 20 equal 20 pixels of width/height? The reason I ask is that I am trying to convert one of my all time favourite movies (:cool: Scarface - "Say hello to my little friend!") however I am having some difficulty. This mainly stems from the fact that the DVD case states the aspect ratio is 2.35:1, however when checking the Console log, it is reported as 1.78:1. I suspect this is because those dreaded black bars have been added to the top and bottom to generate a 2.35:1 aspect ratio on a widescreen TV.

When converting using the H.264 QVA 768kbp method, the file is then Auto resized into a 320x180 format (aspect ratio of 1.78), which I do not have a problem with (although I note that 180 is not divisible by 16). The problem is that the visible area is then very small and not good for viewing.

By my understanding, If I keep the width at 320 (which I want to) then the height of the visible area will be 136 (320 divided by 2.35), however I know that the actual output (including the black bars) is 176 (320 divided by 1.78) and therefore there are c.40 pixels I could get rid of to increase viewing pleasure. I tried cropping 20 off the top and bottom, however the increase in the visible are is very minimal. I then tried cropping at 50 top & bottom and whilst this was better, it was still not what I wanted. Doing this has confused me as cropping 50 has no relation to pixel height. :confused:

I did think that maybe the convertor outputs a 320 x 240 "frame", in essence adding it's own black bars, however on this basis to get the height from 136 to 176 I would need to crop by 64 (240 less 176), i.e. 32 off top and bottom, however my expeiriment in cropping 50 off the top and bottom has already proved this not to be true.

Can anyone out there help me please.

Sincerest apols for length of post. :o

Thanks.

P.S. I did check the earlier post re: cropping 100 pixels however this wasn't useful to me as I want to keep the full width. Also I have tried with other methods (H.264 VGA, MPEG4 QVGA & VGA) and the problem persists.

[Red Kawa]

The crop fields (croptop, cropbottom, etc) are applied to the video before it is resized.

So lets say you had a 720x480 video
If your Croptop=58 and Cropbottom=58
The resulting video would be 720x364
Then the video is resized from 720x364 to the new resolution.

All the profiles try to automatically guess the new resolution, you should turn this feature off (uncheck AutoResize Enabled) and set the resolution width and height to the exact values you want.

[Midiman]

So lets say you had a 720x480 video
If your Croptop=58 and Cropbottom=58
The resulting video would be 704x480

I assume you meant:
The resulting video would be 604x480

That sort of thing could be very confusing to someone taking the numbers at face value.

But... if you're cropping from the top and bottom... why would the width change and not the height? This program confuses the heck out of me! That SHOULD make the resulting video 720x364???

[Midiman]

I posted this in another thread about cropping but it sounded like you might be having some of the troubles I was... here's what I've found:

When playing widescreen video, make sure your iPod's video settings have widescreen turned ON... otherwise it resizes and crops your video for you during playback! Although certain 352x240 mpeg files look better with it OFF because it forces them back to a more natural 4:3 aspect ratio. (352x240 is 4.4:3 or 1.47 instead of 1.33... I DON'T like my women fat!)

Video does NOT need to be encoded to a 4:3 letterboxed format with black bars on the upper/lower edges. 16:9 (1.85... don't know why they call it that 'cause it's REALLY 1.78 or 16.65:9) looks fine encoded at 320x180 (height 176 to comply with /16 rule) resolution. Similarly although not yet tested on my part, 2.35 at 320x136 (might have to change height to 128 or 144 to comply with /16 rule) and 2.85 at 320x112 should look proportionally proper.

The QVGA encoder doesn't seem to adhere strictly to the /16 rule (the console will complain and say that compression may be adversely affected but it works) so 320x180, 320x180 and 320x112 should all work just fine with Videora and the iPod... which doesn't seem to care either.

[Red Kawa]

Midiman, thanks for pointing out that very big mistake in our earlier post.
We have edited the post to correct it.