Aspect Ratio - Which is best program to burn?

Hi people, so pleased I found this great site.

I have a movie in 3 parts, 700mb a piece. It is encoded with AC3 audio and the video is perfect at what seems to be 16:9 (widescreen?), in .avi format.

The problem: I can't find a program that will burn the file as a VCD keeping the aspect ratio and making ue of the AC3 audio. I also wanted to create DVD like menus.

I have Nero 5.5.9.14, TMPGEnc (Evaluation),
Virtual Dub.

I CAN convert the files sucessfully to Mpg with TMPGEnc and the quality is good. But whenever I try to burn it as a VCD it always goes to 4:3 (whole screen, I want the origianl letterbox look! HELP!

THanks.

 

1. Copy the DivX, AVI, ASF or MPEG file to your hard drive. If you dont have the room, then it can be read from the CDROM but this will slow down the conversion and wear out your CD-ROM player at the same time!

2. Run Windows Media Player and load and playback the movie. Hit Alt-Enter to full screen and note if its Full Screen 4:3, 16:9 or widescreen 2.3:1. Exit.

3. Run TMPGEnc. Go to File / New Project and click OK to clear the program of any previous settings.

4. Now for your Video source, Browse to your file you wish to convert. The Audio source will automatically be filled with same file name and a suggested Output Filename. Change this if you prefer. If your trying to convert a DivX and an error box pops up saying Un-supported, then this can be due to not having the correct Codec or the Audio is VBR MP3 or AC3. Refer to the attached post to handle these correctly.

5. If you check the bottom task bar of TMPGEnc it will give the parameters of the file you just imported. Check the Frames Per Second - fps. If its 25 fps then its PAL, if 29.97fps then its NTSC and if 23.976 then its FILM. So now click Load and load the appropriate VideoCD template. For a PAL conversion, the task bar will then look like:

Video-CD PAL (MPEG-1 352x288 25fps CBR 1150kbps, Layer-2 44100Hz 224kbps)


6. Hit Settings button and under Video tab, change Motion Search Precision to Highest Quality (very slow). As the name suggests, this will give the best quality conversion. Hit Audio Tab and double click the Setting button, tick Change Volume box then hit the Normalize button. Leave at default 100 and click OK. It will now search through the audio stream and suggest a final %. Select OK If the number is greater than 100, make sure Use Audio Edit box is ticked.

7. Change Source Aspect Ratio to the Video Type and Aspect Ratio you noted back when you ran the movie in Windows Media Player. For example, select 16:9 625 Line (PAL) for a normal wide-screen PAL movie or 4:3 625 Line (PAL) for a full screen PAL movie. If converting a DivX, then select 1:1 VGA. Make sure Video Arrange Method is set at Full Screen (Keep Aspect Ratio).

8. If you want to convert a 16:9 movie into a full screen 4:3 movie by removing the black bars at the top and bottom of the picture, we have to clip off the left and right side of the picture. Change Source Aspect Ratio to 4:3 625 Line (PAL) ( or 4:3 525 Line (NTSC) for NTSC movie) and Video Arrange Method is set to Center (Custom Size). Then in the 2 small boxes enter 448 x 288 for PAL ( 448 x 240 for NTSC). This will keep the movie to the correct aspect ratio but at full screen. You may have to play with these numbers to keep the picture in correct ratio as a DivX can already be trimmed from the original source.

9. If you want to convert a 2.3:1 wide-screen movie to a 16:9 movie, then set as per Point 6 above, but, in the 2 small boxes enter 448 x 288 for PAL ( 448 x 224 for NTSC). Sometimes I have found I have to enter 448 x 372 or 400 x 256 for PAL ( ? for NTSC) to keep the correct aspect ratio. You may need to alter then further so if in doubt, do a small test run first and look for round objects that should stay round.
NOTE: All the numbers should ALWAYS be dividable by 16 or edge distortion will occur.

10. Click the GOP Structure tab and change the GOP structure to read 1 4 2 for PAL and 1 5 2 for NTSC or FILM.

11. Leave all the other settings alone. Hit OK.

12. All is now ready to start the conversion, so hit Start button and the encoding will begin. This can take from 2 to 10 hours or more depending on the length of movie, your computer speed and other movie parameters. Go to Options/Task Priority and set to When Active - High Priority. This speeds up the conversion by 5-10%. So turn the monitor off and go to bed. Wake up Neo and all should be done.

13. You will now have a new file on your HD, about 600meg for every hour of movie. One big *.MPG file made up of both the Video and Audio streams and in VCD format.

14. Its now time to check that the Video and Audio are syncronised. Double click on the *.MPG file from Explorer and Windows Media Player will play your new movie. Check near the start, middle and near the end. If all is okay then jump to Step 4: Cutting, if not okay, move to Step 3.

Shoey

 

Hey thanks alot, I can see the difference in the preview window! It stays in 16:9 ratio.

Many thanks.

Scott.