Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: trailers and shorts with DVD features

This is topic trailers and shorts with DVD features in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-21-2008, 08:28 PM:

For those who do video shows at home using DVDs, how do you show trailers and shorts prior to the feature? (I can't possibly be the only person who does this, can I?)

I've more-or-less figured out how to rip an existing DVD with "DVD Decrypter" and re-author a version without menus using "DVD Shrink" (both freeware), but I'm having trouble with how to deal with aspect ratio changes. Specifically, how does one produce a 16x9 anamorphic pillarbox version of a 4x3 short film to play before a 16x9 anamorphic feature? What about the reverse: how does one make an unsqueezed letterbox version of a 16x9 anamorphic short or trailer to show before a 4x3 feature?

Is there a better way to approach this than by re-authoring the DVD (and accepting the quality loss that goes along with it)? Does anyone use two DVD players and a switcher/scaler?

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 12-21-2008, 10:24 PM:

Home Theatre PCs are becoming very inexpensive to build. ZPlayer coupled with ffdshow can play most everything you throw at it. It supports playlisting, aspect ratio configuration, and 5.1 out via SPDFF.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-22-2008, 12:44 AM:

What about playing blu-ray rips?

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-22-2008, 02:54 AM:

I've noticed that some DVD's can't be ripped by either program - looks like they're getting smarter in preventing any sort of ripping programs to extract information for authored DVD burning.

Granted, "Shrink" was last updated in 2005, making it an old program..

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-22-2008, 10:00 AM:

Mike--that option looks interesting, and I like the idea of playing off a hard disk instead of recompressing everything to fit on one disk. SPDIF would mean that I would need a DMA8, though. Is there a way to get matrixed L/R out of a laptop without using it's crappy built-in soundcard? As in, is there a reasonably priced external firewire or USB soundcard that would work? Bonus points if I could get six discrete channels out of it that could be fed into a format 10 input.

I don't actually own a video projector at the moment, but have borrowed them for special screenings in the past and am considering getting something cheap in the forseeable future. The trailer/short issue has always been a problem, and swapping disks and changing aspect ratios on the fly is not much fun. I suppose that I could do trailers/shorts on film and then "changeover" to video for the feature, but that would be depressing.

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 12-23-2008, 04:54 AM:

Proper equipment will automatically switch between 4x3 and 16x9 modes when there is material in both on the same discs. I've actually held off getting a widescreen TV for so long because a lot of older models don't do this, but it looks like most of the newer ones do. Some of the newer players actually put black bars on the sides of 4x3 pictures and squeeze it, so these will work on TVs that don't switch automatically.

If you look hard enough, you can find programs that can beat the newer copy-protection schemes, but of course you're a bad person if you do that [Wink]

Posted by Louis Belloisy (Member # 3836) on 12-29-2008, 10:45 AM:

here is how i do it and it works just fine. use DVD Decrypter to rip the dvd. if you want to add trailers, find them and put them in separate folders and using nero recode, version 7 only, assemble them and burn them to a double layer dvd (8 gig) with no compression. do not burn with shrink, its not all that dependable. use version 7 of nero recode. newer versions of nero are not all that reliable either.

I just set up a classic film festival at a local theater to be shown in digital from my blu ray player and it worked fine.

louis

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 12-29-2008, 12:21 PM:

I don't know if it will play nicely with ffdshows 5.1 decoding, but this USB soundcard has 5.1. Standard L/R should work as well.

http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=206&product=10702

Brad, how are you ripping BluRays? Can you get the transport stream right off the disk?

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 12-29-2008, 08:39 PM:

I do the low-tech method and use a DVD player for the "pre-show" trailers (I don't have any HD pre-show stuff yet), and then my remote dims the lights further while switching inputs on the receiver, and begins the main feature which I paused previously on my PS3.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-30-2008, 10:34 PM:

Scott--how do you deal with aspect ratio changes? Do you have a video projector that can scale down the second input to match the height of the main feature, or do you use some other method?

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 01-05-2009, 08:57 PM:

I don't have a constant-height setup yet, so everything fits into the 1.78:1 space of the standard movie screen.

In the future, I'd like to have something on the order of the Panasonic AE3000, which does automated zooms for aspect ratio changes, so that I can have a constant image height without paying through the nose for an anamorphic lens and processor.