Software to put borders around AVI's?

[TrolleyDave]

I've got some Anime that I want to watch on the TV using my standalone DVD/DivX player. Unfortunately the subs (hardcoded) are appearing in the overscan so I can't read them.

I don't know alot about encoding and was wondering if there is software I can use to easily put a black border around the AVI that fills the overscan so the whole of the video is contained in the viewable area?

 

[Darkforce]

I don't think it would be possible to add a border to an avi file, at least easily, because I'm guessing you would have to re-encode the whole thing? Does your TV/DVD player not have a zoom function? Mine has a 50% and 75% zoom which will zoom out and give you a black border around the screen. Playing around with the aspect ratio may also give you good results.

 

[lagman]

Yup, you'd need to re-encode it, Virtualdub can do it:

Video-->FilTers--->Add--->Resize--->Expand

But yes, it's a pain in the ass.

 

[TrolleyDave]

I don't think it would be possible to add a border to an avi file, at least easily, because I'm guessing you would have to re-encode the whole thing? Does your TV/DVD player not have a zoom function? Mine has a 50% and 75% zoom which will zoom out and give you a black border around the screen. Playing around with the aspect ratio may also give you good results.

I don't mid reencoding at all, it only takes maybe an hour or an hour an half to reencode something. It's got the zoom out to 50% but it drives me nuts watching it like that, far far too much dead space on the screen.

 

[TrolleyDave]

Yup, you'd need to re-encode it, Virtualdub can do it:

Video-->Filers--->Add--->Resize--->Expand

But yes, it's a pain in the ass.

So if I lower the resolution it should work in theory? I wasn't sure if the standalone players expanded the picture to the correct resolution, but now that I type it out I see how dumb I am. I've watched plenty of widescreen/letterboxed stuff and it doesn't expand the pic to fit the screen! D'oh! I thought I had to pad the empty parts of the screen with crop bars, but the player obviously puts the in itself as the crop bars aren't there on the PC!

 

[FAST6191]

Simple way: assuming your TV can not be made to behave not as far as I know (you might be able to kludge the info given but I would not even consider this).

Personally I would go the non linear editing route or just add borders and use AVIsynth.

directshowsource("nameoffile.avi")
AddBorders(0, 88, 0, 88, $000000)

If you tweak the addborders (and the 176 pixels extra the above gives will likely be excessive) remember to leave it as a multiple of 16 pixels and consider cropping the video to make the "original" video a multiple of 16 as well for in the first case or you risk an unplayable video as well as making it far bigger than it needs for the second.

Also if playing with plain XVID you might want to try the cartoon mode if the anime is not all that detailed, space goes down nicely when you use it.

 

[Darkforce]

If you are burning the shows as data DVDs to watch on your DVD/Xvid player you could consider getting an XBox and softmod it with XBMC. An xbox can be had for £20-30 nowadays, and another £5-10 to softmod it. XBMC kicks major ass and will play virtually all video formats and you can adjust overscan easily.

 

[TrolleyDave]

If you are burning the shows as data DVDs to watch on your DVD/Xvid player you could consider getting an XBox and softmod it with XBMC. An xbox can be had for £20-30 nowadays, and another £5-10 to softmod it. XBMC kicks major ass and will play virtually all video formats and you can adjust overscan easily.

I've got one, but I usually dump stuff I want to watch onto a DVD+RW (stops me going through endless amounts of write once discs!) and my XBox doesn't read them. I know getting it to read RW's is a simple matter of tuning the laser pot but it's much easier just to put it on a RW and watch it on the Philips.