Changing NTSC .9 Mpegs to 1.2 MPEGS

[John Rich]

I've made several DVD's with older footage recorded as NTSC 720x480 .9 PAR and all I have is the video_ts file. I want to make a DVD Widescreen NTSC so I can play it on my upconverting DVD player to fill the whole screen of a HDTV.

I was thinking of renaming the .vob files in the video_ts file to .mpeg and then using HDLink to change the PAR to 1.2 and then using the new mpeg files to re-author another DVD in Encore.
Is that a reasonable workflow, or is there a better suggestion.
Thanks in advance.
John Rich

[Robert Young]

It sounds like the original footage was shot as 4x3 aspect ratio. If you convert it to 16x9 ratio by just altering the PAR from .9 to 1.2, isn't that going to look "stretched" when viewed on HDTV? I've never done this, but it would seem like you would have to crop the 4x3 images to get proper widescreen display that looks correct. However, if you throw away all of those pixels by cropping, probably the image will look very soft when blown up to full screen, even with an upscaling player.
Maybe I don't understand exactly what you are trying to do.

[John Rich]

Thanks Bob.

You are probably right, that it would look stretched. However, I can't HD link to convert the file.
I opened the video_ts file and selected the first .vob file and renamed it with a .mpeg extension and it played nicely in Windows Med Player.

Then I opened HDLink and
1. Selected "Convert"
2. Selected the file which appeared in the "SourceClip" window.
3. Went to Prefs and selected automatically convert to Cineform intermediate
4. Set to HIgh and Interlaced
5. Set to Resize video NTSC 16x9

I "started" and it ran for a few seconds, and said the conversion was successful, but I couldn't find the file anywhere. The file I was trying to convert was about a gigabite.

I'm not sure what is the problem, but perhaps David can help.
Thanks in advance.
John Rich

[David Newman]

Rename the .vob to .MPG not .MPEG, *.mpeg files are Adobe transport streams and are handled differently.

[Robert Young]

John
If you pursue this, let us know how it turns out.

[John Rich]

David - As usual you came through with the detail to make something work for me. Thanks.

Bob, I saw a thread in the Adobe forum where some guys were trying to go from SD to BluRay ( the opposite of the usual concern) and I got the idea of using HDlink to convert SD 720x480 PAR .9 DVD folders to wide screen DVD (PAR 1.2) to display on my wide screen TV with my PlayStation3.
I renamed a .VOB file to .MPG and used HDLINK to convert to 1280x720 and then used the .AVI to make a new ENcore folder and burned the disk with ImgBurn.
As you predicted, this caused some stretching of the picture, but it looked good on the TV, filling the screen and color seemed ok.
However, I then played the original 4x3 SD DVD on the PS3 and amazingly to me this footage was also upconverted by the PS3 and looked identical to what I got, and filled the screen (still stretching the footage) when I went through the .VOB process. While, I don't know if this would happen on other upconverting DVD players, it really made the process I was trying unnecessary.
I appreciate your asking, but this seems like a "negative report".
John

[Robert Young]

John
Your experience with all of this makes me think about the 2 Sony HDTVs I have. Both TVs will show SD broadcast/cable 4x3 TV shows as 4x3, or as widescreen ("Full" setting) with some stretching at the edges, but not so much in the middle of the image. Both TVs will also do the same thing with any 4x3 DVD I play, whether upscaled, or not.
So, indeed, it does look like your project was an excersize in futility. It comes down to a TV monitor issue, not an encoding issue.