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Creating true "black bars"?

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I just recently acquired a copy of the PAL SE LD set, for use in editing.

In the top-right corner, there's a plus sign and a blue box that are present for the whole film, in every frame.

Is there a relatively simple way to paste black over this part, or even the entire 'black bars'?
Thank you!

My stance on revising fan edits.

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That is, of course, not from LD -- it's the Canal+ DVB broadcast. I'm not sure there's anything finer in PAL.

If you want to replace the black bars, you'll best get familiar with DGIndex, AviSynth, and TMPGEnc or CCE. You'll have to re-encode, in other words.
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I was quite confident you knew it wasn't from LD, but I did want to head off any enquiries from those maybe not quite so experienced.

The resource I always point to is Doom9.org. The forums there are where all the people who actually write apps like AviSynth hang out, so it's a rich treasure trove of all things digital video.

The steps you're probably going to need to take are:

1. Produce a D2V file from your DVD source, using DGIndex.
2. Write a quick AVS file for AviSynth, loading the D2V.
3. Cropping black bars is super-simple with AviSynth: Crop(0,100,0,100) should probably get you in the ballpark.
4. Adding true black bars is also super-simple with AviSynth: AddBorders(0,100,0,100) will be close.
5. MPEG-2 encoding is the trickiest part for me, since I've never gotten to that stage. But I know you'll want to use TMPGEnc or CCE to render it out, probably as elementary streams.
6. You'll need to re-author the DVD. DVDLab is a popular choice.
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On a black bars related topic, I've noticed that playing a DVD I made that's anamorphic 2.35:1 on a 4:3 screen so the player squishes the picture, the black bars above and below are grey and black (!) the grey area is outside the 16:9 image (the area the player doesn't use while squashing the anamorphic picture) whilst the black area is inside the 16:9 image (the encoded black bars).

Anyone got any clues as to why? commercial 2.35:1 DVDs don't appear to exhibit the same grey bars behavior.
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***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***
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Hmm... I wonder if there are some flags set incorrectly that are telling your player something different than a commercial DVD tells it? Like, maybe a commercial DVD is telling your player "4:3 P&S" while your DVD is telling it "4:3 LB" or something?

What's it look like in some computer-based player (like VLC or Media Player Classic, or PowerDVD or WinDVD)? That might also give some hints as to what the player's being told to do.
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citizen, all frames on a DVD must be 720x480, regardless of the picture information. Commercial movies that are cropped/resized to 1.78:1 (16x9) will fill the entire screen, but 2.35:1 films like Star Wars require black bars at the top and bottom of the frame, because the film is far wider compared to its height than the actual DVD frame. While it is difficult to see, ALL DVDs with a ratio greater than 2.35:1 will have black bars at the top and bottom of the frame - even on a widescreen TV - and if you play it back on a 4x3 TV, the player will generate bars that go above and below those bars as well.

In your case, the bars you placed in your frame were not quite black, so the distinction is easy to see. On most commercial DVDs, the black bars in the frame are very black, and very close to the black generated by the player, but if you look really close, and adjust your TV's brightness/contrast, you will see a line dilineating between the black bars in the DVD frame and those generated by the player.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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720x576 for me (PAL ), it's not the black bars on the encoded video I'm on about here, I know how to and have made anamorphic 2.35:1 DVDs before so that's not the issue here, it's the black borders the player generates outside of the image when squashing a 16:9 anamorphic picture to 4:3 that I'm on about not being as black as the encoded black borders on 2.35:1 DVDs.

BTW the black borders on the 2.35:1 DVDs I've encoded have always been RGB 000.

I'm going to do some testing later between 2.35:1 anamorphic DVDs I've made and commercial ones, using a 4:3 screen, a 16:9 screen in 4:3 mode, my main DVD player and my portable DVD player (it has video out).
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***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***
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It could be that the brightness is set too high on your display, but if that were the case I'd expect it to be the other way around (the grey would be within the 16:9 part of the image).

As a general approximation, brightness should be set so that 4% above black is just visible (that is a solid bar RGB 10,10,10 can just be seen on a RGB 0,0,0 background).

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The grey bar outside the 16:9 area isn't bothering me too much as my main tv is 16:9 aspect ratio anyway, it's the perfectionist in me trying to find out why there are grey bars on a 4:3 display.

With a software DVD player on a PC screen there's zero problems, the area outside the 16:9 is as black as the encoded borders on a 2.35:1 image, so displaying it on the 1024x768 LCD screen in my projector all is peachy.
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***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***