padding do anything?

[3dmation]

I think the padding feature isn't very documented, but worse still it doesn't seem to do anything. I have a movie that's 720 x 404 pixels, which is close to 16:9, should really be 720 x 405. Anyway, I'd like to convert it to the new 480 x 272 size which is slightly larger than 16:9, so I want to add padding vertically to my movie so that when converted, it puts a black line on top for the movie and keeps the rest at the right aspect ratio. I tried just padding it one line, two lines, three lines, which makes it not convert. The I thought, maybe it's multiples of 2, so i tried two lines top and bottom, and it does convert, only it didn't look any different. So then I tried 16 lines top and 16 lines bottom, and it does convert, only it still doesn't look any different. I'd expect to see black bars at least now, but no luck. Anybody else not getting pading to work?

Barry

[3dmation]

oh, this sounds trivial to a movie that is very close to 16:9, but it gets more serious for one that is techniscope or 2.35:1, you'd need a lot more padding, yes?

[themediaman]

I tried converting some Apple Quicktime trailers and that the screen was stretched vertically before padding is added. When played back in PSP, then it was probably playing back the vertically stretched part, and the "padding" was beyond the top and bottom of the screen. Just a guess.

Here's what I did:
Spider-Man 3 trailer is 480x228. I created a new profile named "480x228 > 480x272"
Changed the resolution to 480x228, and the top and bottom padding to 22 (228 + 22 + 22 = 272)

When I was testing earlier, the video would be stretched to 480x272 FIRST, then padded with 22 pixels. When I opened the MP4 in Quicktime Player, it would show a 480x316 video (272 + 22 + 22).

Hope that helps.