Add letterbox to video

Hello,

I've tried searching for an answer to my question on this forum (and Google), but could not find much information.

I have some AVI (DivX) videos with the ratio of 2.35:1 and my standalone DivX player automatically resizes these videos to the size of my 16:9 TV screen and they look pretty bad as a result. So I was wondering if there's software (preferably free) that would allow me to add letterbox (black bars on top and bottom) to these videos so they are the right aspect ratio for my tv - 16:9 or 1.77:1.
I've tried VirtualDub, but I was looking for something more basic and perhaps with faster encoding speeds. It's important for me to keep the quality of these videos completely intact and just add the letterbox. Is this even possible to do without re-encoding the videos?

Thank you in advance.

 

ESS based player?

It isn't possible without re-encoding, but since VDub filters require converting to RGB it is possible to do faster. You could for instance use AVISynth to frameserve or you could use mencoder with -vf expand. I use -vf expand for playback (allows subs in the letterbox) on my 16:9 LCD and it works quite well.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I'm very new to this so I'm not even sure if it's an ESS based player. It's a Samsung DVD-HD1080P7.

As for your recommendation, it seems that both AVISynth and Mencoder are script based, but I would really prefer some software with GUI. Are there any other ones aside from VirtualDub?

Thanks again!

 

Give this app a shot.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MPEG4_Modifier

 

Thanks. I just tried MPEG4Modifier, but either I don't know how to use it properly or it doesn't do what I need it to do. I couldn't get the letterbox in the videos.

Would anyone know how to setup VirtualDub correctly so I get the same quality on the output as on the input using XviD codec? I encoded a couple of videos, and while I was able to add the letterbox, the size of the new videos is actually smaller than that of the originals, which leads me to believe the quality was compromised.

Thanks.

 

You will have to re-encode with Vdub, hence there will be a quality loss.

 

Looks like it is Zoran Vaddis 7 based. Not heard anything about video stretching on those so there may be a setting or firmware update that resolves the problem?

MPEG4Modifer won't help, since even if the player did respect non 1:1 PAR's, presumably the AR is fine already with a 1:1 PAR.

Xvid is a lossy codec, so re-encoding always means quality loss. Filtering via VDub also means converting to RGB which will result in further loss.