hi all... this should be a fairly easy one for any clued up video vigilantes out there... i have a few divx avis which are in widescreen. they have resolutions like 512 x 272 or 640 x 272 (x,y). i want to transcode them to mpeg-2 and i want the width to stretch to the edges of my 4:3 tv (i think that is 720) and the aspect ratio to remain the same as the source avi. how do i get tmpg to do this? i know the key is in the size, source aspect ratio and video arrange method menus but i need help still. thanx intelinside :D

Make sure video arrange method is full screen - keep aspect ratio. That should be it. Dave

i have another question. what settings do i have to use so that the final dvd has a 16:9 aspect ratio. I have the the following: 640x272 resolution, ntsc 23.976 fps i'm using TMPG to do the encode. so i would like to know which settings to use so that i have a 16:9 movie. so far i've used source aspect ratio 1:1, Video arrange method - full screen keep aspect ratio (all this in the advanced menu) then in the video menu i use 4:3 (as it is in the guide) and i end up with a 4:3 movie. i also author as 4:3 with maestro. one more thing. i'm in europe so i'm not sure if the tv has any influence on the image aspect (image looking stretched) or not.

Try this: On the advanced tab, source A/R 1:1 vga video arrange - full screen keep A/R On the video screen set aspect ration - 16:9 525 NTSC Dave

tks for the fast reply. later yesterday, i tried diferent settings. i used source a/r 1:1 vga and video arrange mode center - custom res and used a res of 720x306 (to keep the aspect ratio of 640x272). don't know how it looks, but since you seem to know more about this than me... i'll try your method as soon as i get home. once again tks for the reply.

Hello, you can do it by calculation - I've done it before. In your avi, 640*272, on a 4/3 display would give a height of 272. This is the number of lines of picture on the TV, with the letter boxing taking up 104 lines above and 104 below (approx) To find the proper picture height so that the A/R is correct for a 16/9 TV you end up multiplying the 272 by 1.33 which equals 362 (approx). Or this: (480 * 16 / 9) / (640/272) = 362 (approx) Of course, for a 4/3 TV: (480 * 4 / 3) / (640/272) = 272 (approx) But why do all this? Tmpgenc does it for you! Dave

damn... my bad. tmpegenc does that for me alright. :D all i had to do was to selec 16:9 in the video tab. i was fooled by the stretched look of the movie in the preview window, when encoding. now everything works just fine. Thank you all for the help.

BTW, it's useless to encode MPEG4 videos in 16:9 anamorphic if they aren't anamorphic to start with. And since you're encoding more pixels (well not really more pixels, but less black bars) in anamorphic the quality will be worse.