Playing anamorphic Blu-ray on 16:9 HDTV: how to get rid of black borders?

When watching Blu-ray movie on a widescreen TV, you may find that the image do not always fits the screen well. Now that most BD movies are released in 2.4:1 aspect ratio, you get bars across the top and bottom of the screen. This is not a big problem with LCD TVs, as they should stay that way because that is how they are meant to be seen. However, it is a problem when you watch these movies with plasma TVs, because you have to use the 16:9 zoom feature because of burn-in issues. This leads to grainy pictures. Is there any way to adjust Blu-ray aspect ratio to fit for different display? Maybe a best way is to rip the Blu-ray movie to HD video of desired aspect ratio for HDTV.

In digital images there is a subtle distinction between the Display Aspect Ratio (the image as displayed) and the Storage Aspect Ratio (the ratio of pixel dimensions). Blu-ray movies adopts 16:9 (1920*1080pix) as storage aspect ratio. The most common display aspect ratios used today in the presentation of films in movie theaters are 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 (which is sometimes rounded up to 2.40:1). Other cinema and video aspect ratios exist, but are used infrequently. As for example, the Blu-ray movie Nine is released in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, another new released Blu-ray Disc Inception is in 2.4:1 aspect ratio. When playing the two Blu-ray Discs with Sony PS3 on 16:9 HDTV, there are black bars on top and bottom of the image:

When building a media-center Mac, everyone has his optimal components and different set of requirements. Now that the new Mac Mini sports the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M as its integrated graphics chip, it is finally a true contender for the home media center space. After building up a Mac mini HTPC, most folks would download music, pictures, games, music and most important of all, their movie collections to the Mac Mini HTPC immediately. If you’re HD movie lover and wish to add Blu-ray movies to the newly built Mac HTPC, Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper for Mac and PLEX are good combination. Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper for Mac copies protected Blu-ray movie to your Mac HTPC and PLEX plays high-definition 1080p M2TS files from Blu-ray structure. In that way you play Blu-ray movie on Mac HTPC without quality loss. This following guide tells how to copy/ rip Blu-ray and DVD movies to Mac Mini HTPC with Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper for Mac.

Required hardware: Mac Mini with an external BD drive; source DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

Required software: Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper for Mac

(The software is able to back up Blu-ray movies and commercial DVDs for Mac HTPC Media Center without quality loss or compress the BD and DVD movies to MOV, MP4, MKV, M4V, etc in perfect sync. Download from here a trial version of Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper for Mac )

Enrich your Mac Mini HTPC Media Library: rip DVD and Blu-ray movies to PLEX:

Step 1. Load movies (videos) to the Blu-ray/DVD to Mac HTPC Converter software.

Although most of the time I feel like watching blu-ray movies on HDTV, I’d prefer ripping all the DVD collections to NAS for playing back on wide screen TV as well.  Ripping regular DVD for 16:9 screen playback, however, is not as easy as ripping blu-ray to HDTV. Luckily the Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper did help me get rid of the black bars off the DVD movies. And I’d share with you the best fit for cropping out black bars when ripping DVD to 16:9 wide screen display.

Generally, commercial DVDs are made in a way that is suitable for playing back on a 4:3 TV. So you get black bars added at top and bottom of the picture. When playing DVD on a 16:9 wide screen TV, we tend to display movies at full screen in order to make full use of the wide screen display. In that case the image is slightly stretched, but stills look fine. This is because the original aspect ratio of DVD is 2.35:1 or 1.85:1 instead of 1.78:1 (16:9).

However, when copying or converting DVD movie to video for playback on 16:9 PC or wide screen TV, you may get black boarders around the movie image or serious squeezed picture, like snapshoot A and B in the below image. I suppose you want a perfect fit on 16:9 screen (snapshoot C) or movie at original aspect ratio (snapshoot D)? Pavtube Video DVD Converter Ultimate can help you through. The software rips DVD to MKV, AVI, WMV, MP4, MOV, etc and meanwhile crop DVD at custom size (pix) / aspect ratio. You may also load stretched video files to the software to correct the aspect ratio. A trial version of Pavtube Video DVD Converter is free of access.

Follow the guide below to crop DVD at correct size when ripping DVD movie to PC.

Step 1. Load DVD and decide which chapters to convert.

Place the DVD you’d like to rip into optical drive first. Both commercial DVD and self-made DVD are OK. Run the trial of Pavtube DVD Ripper software, and click “DVD ROM” to load DVD from source drive. If your DVD is saved as files on your computer, click “DVD Folder” and browse to the folder that contains DVD files. Now your movie is now loaded as source. Expand the folder and select the chapters to keep, and set subtitles as long as you like. If you would like to combine all selected DVD videos into one file, please check “Merge into one file”.

Step 2. Set an output format for playback on 16*9 display.

Click the Format bar, and choose a desired format in “Common Video” group. HD Video formats (1280*720, 1920*1080) are not recommended for common DVD (720*480 for NTSC, 720*576 for PAL). Here I select H.264 Video (*.mp4) in “Common Video” as output format.

Step 3. Crop out the black bars on the top and below and adjust aspect ratio.

Let’s see how to get rid of the black edges. First, you select a chapter, and click “Edit” to enter the Video Editor. Here you see the Original Preview and Output Preview area. The original video is put in green frame. Drag the dotted frame to crop out black bars.

To use the original Cinema Scope aspect ratio (snapshoot D), just check the box “Keep original aspect ratio” and click “OK” button to confirm. To play DVD movies without any black edges (snapshoot C), click “OK” and back to the main interface, then click “Settings” button to set a video size of 16:9 in the “Settings” panel, for instance, 720*405, 800*450, 960*640, or 1280*720 (leave the “Keep original aspect ratio” unchecked).

Step 4. Start copying cropped DVD to hard drive.

When back to the interface, click the “Convert” button to start cropping and converting DVD movie to hard drive. After conversion completes, click “Open” to find converted movie.

Other related products for ripping DVD and cropping movies:

Pavtube DVD Ripper

Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper

Pavtube Blu-Ray Video Converter Ultimate

Source:

http://www.pavtube.com/guide/crop-dvd-for-wide-screen-display.html