DVD Maestro problem/Help ChickenMan

bluejay · Jan 20, 2004

DVDMaestro (Import Media procedure problem)

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Thank you Chickenman for that great tutorial on 'Backing uo DVD to DVD-R'. I was able to produce one without a problem.
However, there is a problem right now that I encountered and couldn't solve it on my own so I'm back here in the Forum. I just finished the procedure on DVD2SVCD. The movie (widescreen) has an Aspect ratio of 16:9(borders added,encoded as 4:3). But this time I select the option "Edit the avisynth script file" to minimize the top and bottom borders. I selected 'BicubicResize with the following lines:Crop(90,10,540,460)
BicubicResize(480,460,0.0,0.6)
AddBorders(0,10,0,10)
When the process was done I started DVDMaestro and here is where the problem started. When I went to 'Import Media' and selected the file 'Pulldown_Encoded_Video_NTSC.mpv it gave me an error message-Illegal picture resolution for DVD-Video(0x10a000b). Is there a way to go around this ? Does it mean that when you backup a DVD you should not edit the Avisynth or is there a limitation as to how far you can edit it ?
Any help is appreciated.

Thx!

ChickenMan · Jan 20, 2004

bluejay said:
Crop(90,10,540,460)
BicubicResize(480,460,0.0,0.6)
AddBorders(0,10,0,10)

Arr... you reduced the width down to 480 from the original 720. Thats NOT a dvd standard, hence the error (thats a SVCD width!). If you trying to cut off the top and bottom black bars, dont play with the width, leave it as is.

bluejay · Jan 21, 2004

ChickenMan said:
Arr... you reduced the width down to 480 from the original 720. Thats NOT a dvd standard, hence the error (thats a SVCD width!). If you trying to cut off the top and bottom black bars, dont play with the width, leave it as is.

Thank you. That was very informative. Can you suggest any parameters as to how far I can go to cut off the top and bottom black bars without making the characters noticeable stretch ?

ChickenMan · Jan 21, 2004

A 1% stretch is noticable to many people, I would NOT recommend encoding anything and stretching or squashing just to fill up the screen. If you want to turn a 16:9 movie into a true 4:3 with no black bars you need to chop off the black bars at the top/bottom and some of the picture to the left and right, then expand it all up to DVD size again. The clues to all this is at the bottom of the DVD to SVCD tutorial, I have modified them for DVD to DVDR for you. This assuming the original DVD is actually 4:3 with a 16:9 picture in the middle with black bars top and bottom

DVDR PAL
....
Crop(90,72,540,432) <-- insert this line here
BiCubicResize(720,576,0,0.6) <-- edit this line if necessary
AddBorders(0,72,0,72) <-- delete this line if it exists

DVDR NTSC
....
Crop(90,60,540,360) <-- insert this line here
BiCubicResize(720,480,0,0.6) <-- edit this line if necessary
AddBorders(0,60,0,60) <-- delete this line if it exists

Personally I would not recommend this as the quality of the pictures falls a lot. Its okay for VCD or SVCD but not for DVDR. Best solution is to buy a new 16:9 widescreen TV.

bluejay · Jan 22, 2004

ChickenMan said:
A 1% stretch is noticable to many people, I would NOT recommend encoding anything and stretching or squashing just to fill up the screen. If you want to turn a 16:9 movie into a true 4:3 with no black bars you need to chop off the black bars at the top/bottom and some of the picture to the left and right, then expand it all up to DVD size again. The clues to all this is at the bottom of the DVD to SVCD tutorial, I have modified them for DVD to DVDR for you. This assuming the original DVD is actually 4:3 with a 16:9 picture in the middle with black bars top and bottom

DVDR PAL
....
Crop(90,72,540,432) <-- insert this line here
BiCubicResize(720,576,0,0.6) <-- edit this line if necessary
AddBorders(0,72,0,72) <-- delete this line if it exists

DVDR NTSC
....
Crop(90,60,540,360) <-- insert this line here
BiCubicResize(720,480,0,0.6) <-- edit this line if necessary
AddBorders(0,60,0,60) <-- delete this line if it exists

Personally I would not recommend this as the quality of the pictures falls a lot. Its okay for VCD or SVCD but not for DVDR. Best solution is to buy a new 16:9 widescreen TV.

Thanks again. You're right. The best thing is to buy a new 16:9 widescreen but they're too expensive here in Asia. I have to wait for a couple of years then probably the prices will go down somewhat.
BTW, I was wondering, have you written a procedures as to how to use DVDLAB ? Someone told me it's more tolerable when it comes to resizing compare to DVDMaestro. Is that true ?

ChickenMan · Jan 22, 2004

The authoring software doesnt do any re-sizing. But what they probably mean is DVDLab is very tolerant to non-standard video sizes (like a svcd at 480x576) while most others will reject them.