[MPlayer-users] xvid: cropping black borders and fixing aspect

[Aaron Peterson]

> > It was playing at 480x480 and everyone had tall person syndrome.
> > using -aspect 4:3 seemed to look right,
> > It was playing at 480x480 and everyone had tall person syndrome.
> > using -aspect 4:3 seemed to look right, so this is what seemed to fix
> > the aspect and borders okay:
> >
> > mencoder -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:trell:mbd=2 \
> > -vf scale=480:380,crop=480:208:0:86 \
> > -o "$(basename $f .avi).new.avi" "$f"
> 
> Sounds like SVCD video.  A hardware player would assume 4/3 aspect, and play it back properly.
> 
> > I'm a little worried about losing quality by re-encoding though.  Do
> > you think the degradation will be noticeable?
> 
> If you're doing single-pass encoding, yes, especially in high-motion scenes, it will.  With 2-passes, it will look much better.  You also need to specify a bitrate, it just defaults to 800 and you might want something higher.
> 
> In the future, do not reply off-list.

Hah!  I stink at this mailing list thing I guess.  Sorry again.

The original file is an .avi with XviD video and mp3 audio strangely
enough, so I don't think it was intended for VCD.  Perhaps the person
doing the encoding just didn't ask for help on this list :-)

Thanks again for your advice, I'll specify a higher bitrate and do two
pass encoding.

Aaron