VCD-Wide screen
 

I have a question about making VCD. In my room I have a 4:3 aspect screen and it can't be set otherwise. But some anime, like shingetsutan tsukihime, is in Wide 16:9 aspect. When I convert them into VCD it turns into 4:3 and it doesn't look so good. How do I prevent this from happening? I prefer using PAL, but my player handles PAL as well as NTSC

VCD only have 4:3. A smart VCD converter should maintain the video ratio by filling the top and bottom of the 4:3 frame with black space.

Well I was wondering if anybody knew exactly how much black space?

NTSC is allways better but you can experiment in winamp with the aspect ratios.... or you could buy a 16:9 screen and have it manually stretch the image (by the way, 16:9 screens are fairly expensive, like my boss's BENQ 42" Plasma and his 23" mac cinema display :) )

Just a suggestion, but couldn't you take the width of 4:3 ratio encoded video. Then realizing that the width of 16:9 video aspect will be the same width use cross multiplication to discover the exact width/length the 16:9 video should be.

After this subtract the height of 16:9 video from the height of a 4:3 ratio sized image and divide that answer by two. Then you have the amount you need to add on both the top and bottom of the image as black space, correct?

The mesurements for a 4:3 VCD are normally 352x288 (PAL)
But you have to make an edge so you can see the subs, so the new mesurements become :334x270

The mesurements taken from a 16:9 screenshot are : 640 x 360

640->334
and 360-> 188

You mean something like this???

wow. What I said made so much sense to me last night and now I managed to confuse myself. Anyway, I'm at home right now on my parents computer which doesn't have TMPGENC on it. So, I'll download that later tonight and then see if I can give you a definitive answer tomorrow (complete with screenshots!) ok, Love Witch?

Wow that would be great!

I love the people on this board, there so kind and always willing to help;)

Anyway, just as a note, you have to leave a small edge on the sides or else you won't be able to see the entire screen.

OK, I fooled around a bit today and I think I may have got it.

I took a few screenshots to help. I used TMPGEnc.

Here's some pictures of what I did. 1st aspect ratio 16:9 PAL

http://vulkar.free-host.com/1.jpg

Next center cutsom size and I inputed the sizes which you gave me for the size of a 16:9 video.

http://vulkar.free-host.com/2.jpg

Below is just a picture of it encoding. I got black bars!

http://vulkar.free-host.com/3.jpg

Anyway. Here is cap of the final product play in media player. Ignore the fact that the picture is squashed, I didn't have any 16:9 video to encode so I used an old 4:3 Gundam Seed episode I had laying about. However, it should work without the squashing if the video is actually 16:9.

http://vulkar.free-host.com/capture.JPG

Love Witch, I hope this helps, let me know how things turn out and feel free to ask any questions you may come across. I'll try and figure the some answers. :p