16:9 DVD to 4:3 DV AVI with black bars

[Vince Becquiot]

As long as you are not asking for a program that will break copyright security, which cannot legally be posted here, our favorite is Tmpgenc Xpress, which will lift the footage off the DVD.

You should then be able to drop the footage inside a 4:3 sequence and the bars will be there.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Andy Roth]

Thanks for the answer!
Hehe, no i’m not asking for a program that will break copyright security. My case is: there’s a short film we made, and the original ratio of it is 16:9, i only have it on dvd, but i need a 4:3 version of it with black bars on the top and the bottom to be able to add subtitles in Premiere.

I kinda figured out something for this: if i open my 5:4 DV avi footage (that i have made with Super converter from the 16:9 dvd) in Premiere in a 4:3 project, and go to ‘interprete footage’, change the 5:4 ratio to DV PAL widescreen, and lower the scale of the footage down to about 75%, it looks like a letterboxed 4:3 with black bars that i wanted. Is it ok, or is this just stupid and i need another solution? I mean, at first glance it’s totally fine, but is there something about this procedure i should know? Like quality issues or something?

Thanks a lot in advance!

[Vince Becquiot]

The way you described it, it sounds like you may be losing quality unnecessarily.

It depends on how bad you want to keep quality throughout, but after your second compression back to DVD, you may find that that the result is pretty bad. I would do another export to Mpeg2 to simualate your final export and see if you can live with the result before you start subtitling.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area