i'm new here and i really know nothing much about encoding or converting videos to dvd. lately i downloaded movies which are probably widescreen, they are xvid, divx or avi files. i tried using nerovision 4 to convert them into dvd. what i get back is a small screen of video about 2/5 video and the rest is black bars on top and bottom. this is really annoying, so what i want to know is how can i burn these files to dvd and its full screen or bigger proportion is video not black bars. i have tried changing conversions to 16:9 and 4:3 and automatic already doesn't seem like it does much using nero. so can anyone give me a detail guide to buring good dvds?
The assumption is that the original movie had an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and was letterboxed to 16:9 when migrated to DVD.
When the movie was ripped to AVI, the black bars were removed (AVI's are intended to be viewed on a PC, but unless your monitor is 1.85:1 and depending if you show it full screen or not, your player will stick black bars on it).
When converting the AVI back to DVD format, you put the letterbox back (because the only aspect ratios allowed are 4:3 or 16:9) - the alternative is to distort the original frame to fit the new frame or use the zoom feature of your widescreen TV - which essentially distorts it as before.
A thing I've tried a few times, for extra W/S,
(2.35 or similar) is cropping a little off of each side,
(say 40 pixels) and then stretching it by say, 32 pixels top to bottom,
a 720*320 avi becomes 640*352. There's a small distortion, but
not too much. It's a bit more palatable on a smallish TV screen.
*Any* fudging of the aspect ratio is a compromise, *you* have to decide
what you can live with.
Use the Video resize method option, choose your TV, 4:3 or 16:9 and tick "Pan-Scan' (you could also try 'Automatic' and see if you like it, it's a good compromise between large bars and none). To further refine Pan-Scan and help mitigate the drastic image loss tick 'Symmetric Pad/Crop' and add some borders (Pad) all around to compensate for your TV's overscan. At least 16 would be a good start. After viewing you may need more or less.
