Resolution 720x576 (4:3) = 1024x576 (16:9) ?

If you don't mind it squashed then I'd stick with it the way you like it.

When you watch a 4:3 DVD on a widescreen, one of 3 things must happen:

You get black sidebars.
The picture is distorted.
The picture is zoomed (effectively cutting off the top and bottom.

If your DVD is 4:3 then I'd try cropping top and bottom by 72 and setting the resolution at 768 x 432.

Otherwise I'd try no cropping, anamorphic on and leaving your resolution blank. This sounds like a more conventional DVD than your last one to me and handbrake should take care of it using the tv preset.

For the benefit of others Pedro is converting home made DVD's on a windows platform, handbrake does not decrypt commercial DVD's on the windows platform and this topic shouldn't create any issues relating to terms of use for these forums.

Message was edited by: Winston Churchill

720 x 576 can be either 4:3 or 16:9 it depends on the AR of the pixels (shape) which is different to the AR of the whole image.

Left to its own devices handbrake will simply maintain the original resolution (720 x 576) if the anamorphic flags are maintained and when displayed will display at the intended aspect ratio of either 4:3 or 16:9 if the anamorphic flags are removed it would create an export of 768 x 576 from your DVD (assuming it to be 4:3) or 1024 x 576 (assuming it to be 16:9)

If your original source was 16:9 it would therefore be easy to create a 16:9 export using handbrake. But if it's 4:3 you need to do some cropping. Since when you enter your own resolution into handbrake the anamorphic flags are turned off you have to consider what is happening here. The first thing to consider is that with anamorphic flags turned off your rectangular pixels will be converted to square ones so to maintain the original AR of 4:3 you need to convert the width of the picture to 768 square pixels from 720 rectangular ones so your export is now 768 x 576.

However you now wish to convert it to 16:9, you could do this by simply exporting to either 1024 x 576 or 768 x 432 or indeed 720 x 405 (which is best I will return to in a moment) but in each case the picture is either simply squashed or stretched to fit these sizes, so this is where you need to crop to stop this happening.

Take the 1024 x 576 option. To get to 1024 from 720 you need to multiply by 1.42 so you need to do the same to the height which gives you 819, if you simply convert to 1024 x 576, this new height of 819 simply gets squashed into 576 and distorts the picture, what you really need to do is just take the middle 576 pixels and throw away the top and bottom edges (cropping).

If you export to 1024 x 576 you are simply wasting space since you cannot improve on the original quality you are also resampling the original source, if you choose 768 x 432 you are still resampling but taking up less space, if you choose 720 x 405 you are not resampling.

In re-assessing my original post you might be better trying 720 x 405 and cropping 85 top and bottom.

What makes things complicated is I'm not sure whether handbrake crops the source and then resamples or crops the resampled image, which is why I suggest experimentation.

Winston Churchill wrote:
If you don't mind it squashed then I'd stick with it the way you like it.

Sometimes what you're not aware of doesn't bother you - so I'm trying to desist from describing the effects of the distortion for fear of Pedro suddely realising things look wrong on all his 'proportional' content. I shall have to remember that I'm not at all short and fat but just perfectly proportional...positive thinking...

AC

Personally I feel the same as you but I know Pedro is not on his own when it comes to AR, my mother is quite happy watching short people on her tv all night long, I've shown her how to set the AR on her tv, but she doesn't seem to like it.

Winston

How do I fit a camel through the....

AC