How to make video's widescreen?

[Shaggy]

hi
ive noticed that some videos i have are in the 4:3 aspect thingy
and as a result it looks like a square on my fz screen
anybody know how to make it widescreen using codec stuff?

WMP doesnt do it automatically for most videos 😞

[MattWilson]

If it has a 4:3 aspect ratio then thats how it should be viewed or it gets stretched and distorted. It can be done with powerDVD by forcing an aspect ratio on it but its horrible to watch.

I only ever use that feature if it was recorded in 4:3 from a 16:9 source so it needs to re restretched.

[jumbles1971]

VLC Media Player allows you to do the same. But as Matt said, it will distort the image so it will look even worse than just having the black bars at either side/

[kee-lo_]

You would need to re-encode the material in 16:9 with black bars on each side, making it, in theory 14:9

[seb21__]

Some TV channels does not show anything in 16:9. A movie maybe looks like 16:9 on a TV but it is probably a zoom from 4:3 with black bars.

Movie DVDs using the same resolution (720x576 for Pal). But they don't use square pixels, the image is anamorph. The image does not need to be zoomed from 4:3 and the image quality looks better because all vertical 576 pixels are in use just for the image without black bars. (more lines = better quality)

On a 4:3 TV you wouldn't notice any different, but on 16:9 TV you would.


http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Illustration_anamorph_letterbox.jpg

16:9 anamorph > 16:9 anamorph, no letterbox > 16:9 anamorph in letterbox (or 4:3 + black bars, often in use by many many many TV channels )