Quickest method of resizing?

[brett63]

What is the quickest way to resize a MPEG file (i.e change from 480x480 to 720x480 or 352x480)? I know that this can be done by re-encoding, but it is very time consuming.

[Dibblah]

Re-encoding's your only option, I'm afraid.

Cheers,

Allan.

[Terono]

Well it is not exactly what you where looking for but I thought this would be helpful for everyone.

There is now a piece of software called DVD Shrink 1.03.
This program is alot like DVD2ONE, DVD95Copy & Instant Copy but freeware DVD Shrink will allow you to shrink a DVD9 disc to a DVD5 (dvdr). This allows you to fit more shows on a single disc.

These will not allow changing 480x480 to 720x480 or 352x480 but will allow you to fit more content on a disc.

You can also download it at: http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Vobtools/DVDShrink103.zip

DVDShrink GUIDEs
http://www.mrbass.org/dvdshrink/
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/mpg/dvdshrink-main.htm

[RxMan]

Where did all of these new people come from?

I think you need DVDPatcher. I works well and is fast.

[brett63]

Won't DVDPatcher cause the player to distort the video (i.e. stretch it)? My understanding was that we patch the 1st header to trick software like SpruceUp into accepting it as compliant video, but it didn't actually process the video. Unfortunately, DVDPatcher's website doesn't have an English page, so I don't have any docs to go by.

It seems a waste to have TMPGEnc strip apart and recompress the video/audio streams, just to resize it. I was hoping for a utility that could insert/remove vertical lines to change it to the desired resolution.

Brett
(lurker no more, and thus prone to the scarlet newbie mark...)

[Dibblah]

MPEG2 works by compressing the video - Removing 'redundant' information. If you "just strip out lines", you're changing the data. The data then needs recompressed. This takes time.

Cheers,

Allan.

[smeghead]

Seems to me that there should be a way of doing this in an optimized way. In the case of 480x480 -> 720x480, it is a fairly simple transformation. Effectively, a third pixel is inserted after every two, probably just by interpolating between pixels 2 and 4.

If each DCT block in an I frame is 8x8, then it should only be necessary to buffer two (maybe a third for look-ahead) blocks, and emit three blocks into the output instead of two. A transcoder like this should be fairly lightweight and efficient, compared to a general purpose transcoder which has to deal with many more cases.

There may already be something out there like this. If not, I would be tempted to try it myself if I can find the time. Unfortunately time is not too plentiful right now We shall see.

[brett63]

Seems to me that there should be a way of doing this in an optimized way.

That's exactly what I thought! And unfortunately I am in the same boat as far as spare time goes

I figured that since this was not a Tivo-specific problem that someone else might have already written an app to do it for other video sources. Oh well...

[AlphaWolf]

Originally posted by smeghead
Seems to me that there should be a way of doing this in an optimized way. In the case of 480x480 -> 720x480, it is a fairly simple transformation.

Olaf said he would be implimenting this in a future version of tystudio.