2 Problems/Questions....

[Razzor420]

1. Is there a way to remove the letterbox effect for when you encode your vids to mpg? like say I have made a vid that had the letterbox effect on it but I wanted to take them off, how would I do so? if you don't know what I mean by the letterbox effect;

http://img6.picsplace.to/img6/20/Letterbox.jpg

I basically want to make it a 4:3 ratio but I still need the black bars gone.



2. Whenever I edit (crop) a video in Canopus (i.e. Crop the sides so it looks sharp) the final produced piece looks extremely pixelated and terrible in video quality. Why is this and can it be fixed!?

Someone help!?

[bhiga]

Use the Layout tool to adjust how much of the image is in the visible frame.

Remember that your output quality depends a lot on the bitrate.

[Razzor420]

I do that and I set the bitrate to 3000 and it never finishes choppy but unless I edit the sides out so its sharp.

Also, anyone still know how to figure out the letterbox problem?

[bhiga]

Looks like your original frame was letterboxed, which also means that expanding out to fill offsets the interlacing. You're also stretching the image beyond its original resolution, so it won't remain as sharp no matter what you do.

And... a 3 Mbps bitrate is pretty low, especially for that type of content where there's a lot of motion and detail (crowd - remember that the computer can't determine what's of interest and what's not).

I don't understand what you mean about the "letterbox problem" here. The problem is that your original source was already letterboxed.

Removing the matte bars will result in a non-4:3 frame. Stretching the image to fill 4:3 is just that - it's stretching the image so you'll lose sharpness.

[Razzor420]

Looks like your original frame was letterboxed, which also means that expanding out to fill offsets the interlacing. You're also stretching the image beyond its original resolution, so it won't remain as sharp no matter what you do.

Well I could do it with TMPGEnc with no worries but I prefer Canopus



Removing the matte bars will result in a non-4:3 frame. Stretching the image to fill 4:3 is just that - it's stretching the image so you'll lose sharpness.

And how do I go about doing this!?

[bhiga]

To distort the image to fill, un-check the Preserve frame aspect checkbox in the Layout window, then expand the image to fill the frame.

[Razzor420]

To distort the image to fill, un-check the Preserve frame aspect checkbox in the Layout window, then expand the image to fill the frame.

Ok pardon my stupidity but is it possible to take a screenshot of where I have to tick as I cannot find it.

[bhiga]

Sorry, don't have a good image but let me try walking you through...

1. Load clip into the bin
2. Drag clip to timeline
3. Right-click the clip in the timeline and choose Layout
You should see a window titled "Video Layout" with two images.
Under the right-side image, in the Stretch area, there should be two checkboxes under x and y. The first one is Preserve frame aspect.
4. Un-check Preserve frame aspect and you will be able to drag the handles of the right-side image to distort it as necessary. Actually, you can just click the button with the up and down facing triangles to fit the height.

Brandon

[bhiga]

Aha, one of the Canopus forum moderators has a page...
http://www.rdonato.com/HDVandEdiusLayout/

[Razzor420]

Ok, I still can't get this working. With the video, the import doesn't have the letterbox effect on it so that says something I guess....

I use Canopus Procoder 2 if that helps. I imported a vid and right clicked it and nothing came up for the Layout, closest thing is Advanced Options which I go to and theres a Crop option but still it's too confusing.

[bhiga]

OOPS... Sorry, I was under the impression you were using EDIUS and feeding the output to ProCoder...

In ProCoder 2, you'll need to do two or three things to achieve what you want:
1) Use the Crop filter to remove the black bars and do not Scale after Crop.
2) (optional) add the Adaptive De-interlace filter to the source - this is to remedy the offset in interlacing that the crop may cause.
3) In Tools | Transcoding Settings | Processing Options, set the Scale&Crop / Letterbox slider to 100% Scale&Crop - this will instruct allow ProCoder to fill the output frame to the smaller of the source's input dimension, letting the part of the image that "spills over" get cut off.

[Green Hornet]

You should be able to simply use a resolution that is a ratio of the source fotage.
I usually just divide the footage in half at both dimensions.


It sounds like your footage is smaller than your project, hence the black lines.

[Razzor420]

Maybe I should of made things a little clearer as I didn't;

- I import videos that don't have the letterbox effect in tact, but when I encode the vid it has the letterbox effect added onto it, which I want to go away.

- When I import a video, I go to Target, Click Add and click MPEG and go to Advanced and try to crop myself I untick Scale After Crop and it still won't get the side parts off so it looks sharp.

[bhiga]

If your original source doesn't have letterboxing, then the source frame aspect ratio does not match the target frame aspect ratio.

Check the aspect ratio of your source and target to ensure they match. The source and target aspect ratios don't match, the default behavior of ProCoder is to letterbox so the entire source frame fits in the target frame.

As this topic isn't really DVX-related, it would be better to take it to the Canopus forum as you'd get more help there.

Brandon