Help needed with Wide-Screen home video footage

[mark66]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can help me here. I have a Sony HC39E Digital Camcorder that is widescreen. I capture my raw .avi using Pinnacle Home Studio and it all looks great in 16:9 within Pinnacle. I can also play the raw .avi using Windows Media Player and it maintains the 16:9 ratio.

However, if I want to compress this footage, using something like Virtual Dub and any codec such as DivX, the video is output as 4:3 and is all out of proportion. I have looked through all the Virtual Dub settings and cannot see anything to tell it that the footage is widescreen.

If I use AVIcodec to interrogate the raw captured .avi it tells me that the video is 720x576 (4:3), but if I remember correctly all widescreen videos are actually 4:3, but some 'tag' within the file tells the media player to stretch it out to make it appear correct in 16:9.

Anyway, if someone could advise how I can maintain the 16:9 using Virtual Dub or recommend some other software that does do it I would be grateful.

Cheers

 

[ajm]

You could try the following as i have found and used this method myself to make the screen res slightly smaller...
Get a program called AutoGk

Open AutoGK
Select file
Select Advanced settings
Under Output resolution change to 640
Under Output audio select Original
Click ok

Now press ctrl and F9
Under .aspect select Override input AR
Click ok
Next select Add job
Then click Start.

Your done you now have a new file that should play on your dvd player.
Check it in Gspot to make sure.

Good luck let me know if it works for you.

 

[mark66]

Hi mate,

Thanks for the tips and the input. However I did actually find a guide on how to maintain the 16:9 ratio using Virtual Dub later that night:

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/dvd2divx_anamorphic.cfm

I just resized the film to 640x360 and that was that. I also picked up a few tips about De-interlacing and using the Null Transform filter, all of which gave me a great final result.

Thanks again for your time and input though

 

[ajm]

As long as you got there in the end with a good result.