TAG | letterboxed
Aspect ratio refers to the units of horizontal measurement on a screen in proportion to the vertical measurement. There are two kinds of TV screens: one is 4:3 (also called full screen) and the other is 16:9(also called widescreen). The 16:9 TV is becoming more and more popular in family theater for it displays broader horizon and is better to enjoy Hollywood movies which are often made with aspect ratio of 1:1.85.
When a 4:3 video is displayed on a 16:9 TV, the TV stretches the image to fill the widescreen and results in squashed look that everything looks shorter and fatter. So if you have some 4:3 DVDs that you want to play on your widescreen TV, how to make the look natural?
Fortunately, many widescreen TVs have different picture modes to help solve this problem. You can make 4:3 setting on the widescreen TV or on the DVD player which works by putting black bars on the sides of the screen, called picture boxing or letterboxed. Also it needs to be set to 480 where it is auto set to 1080p for 16:9 movies by the DVD player. If you don’t like the black bars, there is a mode that crops a little and stretches a little the picture to fill the screen without distorting the picture too much.
If you are unsatisfied with both the above modes to watch 4:3 DVDs in widescreen TV, you can try the below two free programs to convert the DVD with 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9, assuming you have ripped the DVD to the hard drive.
DVD Rebuilder
In DVD Rebuilder, go to Options/AVS Options/Advanced (Expert) Options/Convert from LB 4:3 to 16:9.
convert DVD aspect ratio in DVD Rebuilder
However, DVD Rebuilder is intended for DVD 9 to DVD 5 backup and the aspect ratio conversion doesn’t work for No Compression option. If you want to convert the aspect ratio without losing the original DVD 9 size, you need to add the following line to the [Options] area of REBUILDER.INI file: LAYER_BREAK_REMOVAL=0. Also change the target size in the [Options] area of REBUILDER.INI file to
TargetSectors (that produces DVD5 sizes at the default setting) =4050000.
IfoEdit
IfoEdit can also be used to edit the picture size in the IFO files on a DVD. Just double click on Where it shows the movie to be 4:3 to change to 16:9 and then Save. Check both the VIDEO_TS.IFO file and the IFO file for the main movie. If you are new to IFOEdit, you can check out the Tutes/Readme’s on IFOEdits site on how to use.
change DVD aspect ratio in IfoEdit
DVDPatcher
DVDPatcher can change the video headers in mpg/mpeg2 video including aspect ratio, framerate, resolution/size and bitrate. Just load the VOB file and change the aspect ratio.
change aspect ratio with DVDPatcher
