Expanding 4 x 3 letterbox to 16 x 9

JJKizak wrote on 7/4/2004, 5:54 AM

I have a 1 hr. clip in 720 x 480 letterbox with the letterbox picture about 2.1 x 1. Showing on DVD on a conventional tv is no problem but how would you give the option of expanding it to 16 x 9 (with black bars on top & bottom) for someone with a 16 x 9 tv? The commercial widescreen DVD's do this easily but I don't know how.

JJK

Comments

farss wrote on 7/4/2004, 6:14 AM

Don't have the specifics but something like, set project to 16x9 and use pan/crop to make it fit. Render as 16x9 and author in DVDA as 16:9. Sorry I cannot be more specific, only done this for 16x9 originated material. Note you will suffer loss of quality and that's just a fact of life. I'd start from source material if possibel to avoid double pixel remapping.

JJKizak wrote on 7/4/2004, 6:39 AM

If I change it to 16 x 9 then I will change the aspect to 16 x 9 from 2.1 x 1 and loose picture width. How do the commercial guy's put on 2.5 x 1 on letterbox and then it views widescreen both on 4 x 3 and 16 x 9 tv's
without loosing the aspect ratio?

JJK

erratic wrote on 7/4/2004, 9:43 AM

I assume your video is not anamorphic yet. In that case you can use a method that was posted before by SonyDennis:

Then your letterboxed footage will be converted to anamorphic 16:9. Since the video between the black bars is wider than 16:9 there will still be black bars, but they will be smaller. That's how the commercial guys put it on DVD as well. Author it as a 16:9 DVD and it should work fine on both 4:3 and 16:9 tv sets.

JJKizak wrote on 7/4/2004, 10:49 AM

Thank you mucho much.

JJK