[HOW TO] Full Screen Movies

[dvdcatalyst]

The information in this thread can be applied to almost all video conversion tools. While it explains how you can use DVD Catalyst 4 to make your movies full-screen, the different techniques mentioned here apply to video in general.


The one question we receive the most, either by email or on web forums is in regards on how to make movies full-screen. Especially with square-screen devices such as the Apple iPad and the HP Touchpad, movies often end up with huge black borders when you watch them on the go. While some devices (or video players like MovieGallery) include options to adjust the video playback, there are compromises that are made in order to make your videos full-screen.
This post tries to explain in full detail on how this process works.

The official DVD standard specifies that DVD video content has to have a resolution of 720×480. With the aspect ratio (16:9, 4:3) the DVD player can make adjustments to the video to make it more screen filling on wide screen TVs. Most DVD wide-screen movies, to comply with the DVD standard, have black padding added as part of the video.



The left screenshot shows the widescreen version of Top Gun, while the right screenshot shows the full screen version. The black padding that was added to the video is clearly visible.

By default, DVD Catalyst removes the black padding from the video, so for the wide screen version, it will end up like this:



The full-screen version does not have any padding, so it will stay the same:



If we play these files on a phone or iPod/iPhone, it will look like this:



widescreen version


full screen version


(Video players add black padding to video that does not match the screen resolution, but for indication purposes, we left it white)

In all cases (full screen on the iPod Classic not so much though) the video does not match the device resolution, so black padding is added by the video player itself.

If we do not remove the black padding from the widescreen video, it will end up like this:


original wide screen video not cropped


Black Bars All Around


Because the black borders that are in the original video are converted as part of the actual video, video players will treat these borders as actual video content, and when the entire video is scaled to fit within the device resolution, you end up with AND the black borders of the original DVD, and because the video is not completely sized to fit the device resolution, additional padding is added by the video player.

(This is why DVD Catalyst removes the actual padding from video files by default)

If we want to make all the videos full-screen, there will be some compromises with the video portion.



The transparent, red-marked areas are parts of the video that needs to be removed from the actual video portion to make video full-screen.

On the iPod Classic, making a widescreen movie full-screen results in a loss of almost half of the width of the movie to make it fit. For the iPhone and Galaxy S phone, the portion that needs to be removed is not really that much, but if you convert a movie with a wider aspect ratio (such as Star Wars movies for example, you will still lose a significant part of the video. This technique was used for many years to make theater movies into non-widescreen movies.

If we use the same technique for non-widescreen video (older TV shows for example) it ends up like this:



Full screen on all devices, but on the widescreen devices (iPhone/Galaxy S) parts of the top and bottom are cut-off.

Another method to make movies full screen is by stretching the video.





The video is full-screen, however, because it is stretched in height alone, the actual video looks a bit distorted, making everything longer (and skinnier)

For a full screen movie stretched to fill a widescreen display, the width is enlarged, making everything look wider (and shorter).

[dvdcatalyst]

Border removal options available in DVD Catalyst:

DVD Catalyst has 2 different methods of black bar removal. You can set DVD Catalyst to do it automatically, or you can do it by hand.

Unlike any other conversion tool on the market, DVD Catalyst does not use fixed-values for black bar removal. The automatic options actually create snapshots of the video, and then these snapshots are scanned for black borders, which gives it better accuracy.

By hand:

After scanning a DVD or video file, you can adjust the video properties of each item in the Preview (make sure to enable “Power User mode”).

You can use the sliders to adjust the part that you want to remove.

Another option is to use the automatic options in the preview:

Leave as-is

Remove from Video

Full Screen

[dvdcatalyst]

Automatic:

Because DVD Catalyst 4 was created to eliminate as many clicks as possible for whatever you use it for, it has the capability of removing black borders automatically. All similar programs require you to either select the proper black-bar removal method for each item you convert, or you can only convert one thing at a time. DVD Catalyst’s automatic black bar removal options create and scan screenshots of the actual video for black areas, and with a comparison of the data found in the screenshots, it removes the black borders, regardless of what kind of video you are converting.

Settings that control this behavior are located in the Borders tab found in Global Settings (Power User Mode)



Regardless of what black bar removal mode you have selected (except for “no cropping”), DVD Catalyst will scan the video when you start the conversion for black borders. For a decent accuracy vs. speed ratio, it creates 5 low-quality screenshots.

Each screenshot is scanned for black areas, and if the data collected is considerably different from the others (such as in the first screenshot) it will be ignored. From the data that is kept, the information is used for the black border removal process.

The above screenshot shows in red of what portion of the movie is considered video, and, in this case we had the Droid 2 profile selected with the “remove completely from device” option, displays in green the portion of the video that is actually kept. When the conversion is completed, we end up with full-screen video on the Droid 2

.

No cropping:




Leaves the video as is, so if there are black borders in the video, they will be converted as well. Useful if you only convert video files that do not have any black borders.

Remove from file:




Removes just the black borders from the video portion if there are any.

Completely remove from device:




Removes the black borders from the video if there are any, and then removes part of the sides of the video to make the video full screen.

Partially remove from device:

This option sits in the middle of the previous 2. Black borders will be removed from the video if there is any, and then parts of the video will be removed to make the video almost full screen. Basically half of what will be cut off with “remove from device” will be removed with this setting. You will still have black borders, and you will lose part of the video, but only half of what you would otherwise have to deal with. More screen-filling without losing too much of the video.

Full screen stretch:



Removes the black borders from the video (if there are any) and then it stretches the video to make it full screen.

Some conversion tools call this “Anamorphic”, but in the end, it makes people still look funny.

Add black bars to fit resolution:Removes the black bars from the video if there are any, and then adds new ones to make the video the selected screen resolution. Some devices and video formats (3gp) only support specific screen sizes, and this ensures the files are compatible. The reason why the bars are removed first is to make sure the entire border-area is the same black. Many movies have a slightly tinted black border, and by adding a new one to that, video player devices will not be able to determine the border correctly.

Summary

As mentioned in the beginning, the above applies to video in general.

DVD Catalyst’s approach in detection of black borders is unique in that rather than using fixed border-size specifications (which often leaves small borders, or cuts off too much from the video) it creates screenshots and actually “looks” at these screenshots to determine what needs to be removed. However, regardless of what setting or method you use, there will always be a loss or change in the way the video looks in some way, either by still having black borders but the entire video portion, full-screen video with a portion of the video missing or full-screen video with a (slightly) distorted look.

Our personal preference goes towards “remove black bars from file” (which is why it is set as the default). On most video players, the video player application has a zoom function, which enables you to choose if you want to watch the video in its original form or full-screen.This video:



Will play like this:



And like this: