Converting widescreen to prehistoric TV

[BadOmen]

Howdy

This is something I've been struggling with for a long time with Virtualdub.

How do I convert widescreen movies in order to watch them on a regular old TV? Everytime I try to watch that on my old TV, the movie is condensed into a little strip in the middle of the screen, with a gigantic letterbox around.

If I try to resize the movie by increasing height, everybody is "skinny and tall". Images are streched.

So, what's the solution?
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks everybody!:beer:

(By the way, if there's an easier way to do that with other software than Virtualdub, I'm all ears.)

 

[Bluestealth]

You want use the cropping feature under the filters before you resize the movie. Unfortunately this solution is just about as bad as the others you have already attempted. While the action will usually be in the center of the frame, you might end up cropping some of it.

I prefer to watch movies, tv in their intended aspect ratio whether wide or 5:4 aspect ratio, even if that means there are huge black bars, although I can understand how that could be (really) annoying if you have to watch something on a small screen.

 

[BadOmen]

It is terribly annoying. If I export that to my TV, it's even worse. It`s an old 19 inches and I cannot see much from it with the huge letterbox.

Cropping can help, though. It`s something I never tried, actually. But after that, how should I resize? Directly at the aspect ratio, percents, or is it better to calculate some acceptable width and height based on the desired aspect ratio? How the numbers should be for a regular monitor or TV?

 

[Bluestealth]

I usually just convert directly to the target aspect ratio, although I don't have a lot of experience cropping stuff down

 

[BadOmen]

I just found out that Adobe Encore have a little setting configuration that converts the video automatically to square pixels or... damn, now I forgot the other aspect ratio. Anyway, a nice non-widescreen format.

I still would like to crop that stupid letterbox a little bit, but it's already a big improvement with a few clicks.