Cropping and reencoding for dvd files.

[joerg_p]

Hello everybody,

I have got a bunch of DVD MPEG2-files. They usually have non-square-pixels.

Now I want to crop the letterbox boxes and want to reencode to x264.

My first question is: How do I get the correct final aspect ratio? It can't be measured by pixels, only with an additional information. And the resulting aspect ratio differs by the content, yes it could be 16:09 but it also could be 16:10 or something totally different.

My 2nd question is: What preferences should I chose to have the more or less the same quality as the original files?

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

[eumagga0x2a]

I have got a bunch of DVD MPEG2-files. They usually have non-square-pixels.

MediaInfo application usually gives you the exact display / storage aspect ratio. With this information, deinterlace the video first (only if it is interlaced, of course), scale the picture to match the display width and height, then crop black bars (the width and height of the cropped picture should be a multiple of 16 for better compressibility).

What preferences should I chose to have the more or less the same quality as the original files?

The default is good enough. The quality will be always worse than that of the source.