choosing screen size when encoding

[enaime]

I have been able to encode movies for pocket pc with no problems, unfortunately I am having a tough time figuring out how to size and crop my movies. I followed a great guide on a great website (bigdsvideo) and I got a great result. Now I am trying to get the most out of my Ipaq 4150 screen in landscape view. With the settings from the guide I am left with a movie that contains the black letterbox bands on the top and bottom of my screen when i am in landscape view. I dont know enough about encoding to get rid of those black bands, if its even possible.

Background info: I use TMPGenc program to get an mpeg, then I use windows media encoder to get my wmv file.

Maybe I need to use different settings in the TMPGEnc program, so when I covert the file to wmv it wont have the letterbox black bands.

I apologize for my ignorance when it comes to encoding, but i would rather learn to do it myself that buy one of those dvd to ppc type programs.
Thanx for any help

[Falstaff]

What is the format of your original file, divX, DVD, something else?

[enaime]

The original is a widescreen format DVD 2:35:1 and in the DVD2AVI coversion it says 16:9 aspect ratio.
Do you have any ideas?

[Mitchybums]

There are some programs that you can crop with, like virtuadub, or you can have a look at the app in my sig and see if that works for you. it's basicaly designed for your purpose.

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,24780&sid=31f688f9be064c908fd8f4132b6ed522

[enaime]

I totally appreciate the input, I checked out the program you spoke about. I guess what I really want is for some advice about the settings I can change in either the TMPGEnc or the Windows Media Encoder to acheive filling my ipaq screen in landscape view (without the black bars on top and bottom).
Thanks

[hollis_f]

With a 16:9 aspect ratio you have three choices:

Encode so that the whole screen can be seen on the 320 pixel wide screen. That means the height will have to be: (320/16)*9 = 180 pixels. This will result in the black bars at top and bottom - letter-box format.

If you want the whole height of the screen (240 pixels) to be used then you need to cop the film. The full width would be (240/9)*16 = 427 pixels. But the screen is only 320 pixels so you'd need to crop 107 pixels from the edges - losing 25% of the picture.

To see the whole image, takingup the whole screen, you need to change the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 4:3 and encode at 320*240 pixels. However, everything will be squashed, so that people will look 10 foot tall.

Most people prefer to watch the whole film in letter-box, some prefer to crop, nobody prefers the squashed version. You pays yer money and you takes yer choice.

[Mitchybums]

In the program I mentioned, there is a cropping part build in that will let you select a full screen area.
if you move the top slider to the beginning of the movie, and then select the fullscreen option, it will adjust the bottom, left and right bars to the right locations for a fullscreen movie. the values next to the bars are the values you need to put into the cropping part in the Windows Media Encoder.
( the video size tab in the properties of your Windows Media Session)

basicaly you just need to use the top value and the left value of the program, and put these values in in the custom cropping.
top is basicaly the amount of pixels that need to be cut off from the top (and usualy the same as from the bottom)
left is the value from the left side that needs to be cropped from the left part.(usualy the same as from the right as well)

Cropping in the other program can be found in the top menu bar under options.

It will also give you an easier understanding about what it does.

for other encoders, like tempgenk, the cropping is done differently then windows media encoder.

It uses the left and top value for the start of the rectangle, and then it uses the width and height of the original movie for the length and width of the selection rectangle (the bottom and right values in the other program)

Cropping is done on the original movies picture size, and is best done in the first compression stage (less pixels to use for the bitrate, thus a better quality picture)
Also if you reconvert a movie for ppc use (dvd to mpg to wmv) do not set the screensize in the first process on pocketpc size, because of the codec differences. better use around 2x the ppc size (640x480) or slightly lower (512) to get best results.

good luck

[enaime]

thanks to everyone who helped me out. its was just as I figured, you have to give up something to fill up the screen (like quality and 25% of the picture). I guess I would rather see the picture in its entire widescreen, thats the reason I buy widescreens anyways. The streched out tall people isnt a good picture and loosing 25% of the picture isnt something I like anyways. Im gonna stick with the black bars for now.
Thanks guys.