Video editing, very simple (?) question

[Eight_Rooks]

Just on the offchance. Non-gaming related, so I’m posting it here.

I’ve had an “…ohmyGod this is so easy!” moment and started ripping various DVDs of mine to run Plex (I’d prefer Kodi/XBMC, to be honest, but it seems to be pretty inconsistent/plain crap at passing subtitles to external devices, where Plex does it flawlessly every time). My problem: a couple of movies I have are on old Chinese/HK VCDs (legal, not bootleg, FWIW), and for one of them I’ve just discovered the two halves of the film are a few pixels out, so I can’t join the files.

(EDIT: To clarify, I’ve run it through Handbrake a couple of times, and while it’s not come up the exact same every time it’s always just a little bit mismatched.)

Is there a free video editing program that will allow me to quickly and easily either shave literally two pixels off the edge of one video clip, or otherwise alter the picture so it matches the desired resolution? I don’t want to have to mess around with correct aspect ratios or pixel width or any other such thing - I just want to say to it "This clip is 350x218, it needs to be 350x216, go". Any thoughts? Figured it was worth a try here rather than registering on some AV forum and suffering through hordes of videophiles vomiting in terror at my request ("A resolution of what by what?", etc.) if I even got an answer at all.

(Oh, and since I’m fairly sure ripping your own discs is still technically illegal, fair use or not - if this is a problem, mods, feel free to delete.)

[Tikey]

I use Avidemuxfor that kind of stuff. I believe it has filters for both resize and crop video resolution. It might be what you need.

[Vandelay]

Can you not just use handbrake? The first tab of options has resolution settings, including one for you to set custom ones. That will crop the image to desired size.

I know it will do this as I have done the same as you and set my videos to the film’s aspect ratio, causing most of the subtitles on Let The Right One In to vanish, as they were in the black bars (took me a few minutes of wondering why it seemed to not be showing half the dialogue!)

As for legality, I believe (at least in the UK/EU,) copying discs for your own use is perfectly fine, but circumventing copy protection is illegal. Yes, copying means you have to circumvent the protection, so it is a kind of crazy ruling.

[Cei]

No, the UK recently declared copy shifting illegal again. Afraid the topic will have to (likely) be closed.

[Eight_Rooks]

No worries, close away. Apologies for the trouble.

[alms]

I do not feel comfortable making a call on this one, so the thread has been escalated to Graham. Worst case scenario we learned something new.

[BillButNotBen]

Never tried what you’re after, but the only decent freeware video editor I ever found on windows was Shotcut
http://www.shotcut.org/

If we edit the original post to just be a video editing question rather than mentioning the specific situation, that should be fine, right?

[alms]

Graham sends word it’s OK to continue. As for the question, it is my understanding that you would need to re-encode the files incurring a loss of quality (which is probably not stellar in the first place?), have you tried checking the advanced options to see if you can force the crop window manually, if that makes any sense?

Figured it was worth a try here rather than registering on some AV forum and suffering through hordes of videophiles vomiting in terror at my request ("A resolution of what by what?", etc.) if I even got an answer at all.

I suppose you’ve already tried looking up a discussion for a similar problem? maybe a guide for dealing with that specific format?

[Eight_Rooks]

Graham sends word it’s OK to continue. As for the question, it is my understanding that you would need to re-encode the files incurring a loss of quality (which is probably not stellar in the first place?), have you tried checking the advanced options to see if you can force the crop window manually, if that makes any sense?

I suppose you’ve already tried looking up a discussion for a similar problem? maybe a guide for dealing with that specific format?

I did try and Google for it, but sarcasm aside, it seems the posters who hang around on these forums to answer newbies’ questions are the kind of people who tend towards the most in-depth explanation of the problem you could possibly ask for. And I saw quite a few answers for different questions which were basically “Well, you think you’re asking for the answer to X, but if I give you the answer to X, I have to explain Y and Z at length too”, which kind of put me off asking since getting that kind of reply essentially translates as “No, it can’t be done” to me.

Not sure how you set a specific output resolution in Handbrake (never seems to let me set both height and width) but I checked the two discs and both files are definitely the same resolution originally, so I’ll set it to a strict copy with absolutely no cropping and see if that solves it.

Oh, and again, I was aware of the legal ruling, but… it’s kind of like a discussion on emulation - I figured I’d ask, but regardless of my own thoughts on UK law I didn’t want to cause anyone any hassle.

[alms]

“No, it can’t be done” to me.

I think Tikey’s suggestion of Avidemux covers that specific scenario, though IIRC it’s also not quite the most straightforward tool to use.

One possible alternative, though I’m merely hypothesizing here, is VideoLAN. It does video conversion as well, and I noticed it has a recording feature (none of which I ever used) and advanced filters that can process the image in a number of ways, so you may just be able to crop away those two extra columns of pixels you were talking about and then record the whole video to a different file.

If that still doesn’t work, VirtualDub maybe?

Not sure how you set a specific output resolution in Handbrake (never seems to let me set both height and width) but I checked the two discs and both files are definitely the same resolution originally, so I’ll set it to a strict copy with absolutely no cropping and see if that solves it.

Unless the picture is using the whole screen, conversion programs usually look for the actual image and set a crop window to get rid of black bars. It is possible that VCD being low-res enough, the automatic process is struggling to select the exact same position and size for that window for the two files. Assuming this screenshot is still relevant, the crop selection is under Video Settings, set it to custom and try a few previews until you’re satisfied with the results.

[Skalpadda]

My experience with Handbrake is just doing quick conversions, so I’m definitely no expert. It seems it always sets the video frame automatically to some multiple of some fraction of a table of display widths with a chosen aspect ratio. I assume this is because of Maths. No idea if it’ll help, but if you set “Anamorphic” to “custom” you can play around with display widths and maybe find a way for it to get the two files to match up.

[Eight_Rooks]

Anamorphic to “strict” and no cropping solved it, inasmuch as I now have two files that match and can be joined; they just have fixed black borders as part of the image. Still, given it’s hardly the best quality image to begin with, that’ll do for now.

EDIT: If anyone’s actually curious, the VCD in question is this film. Exciting, I know. Not quite as boring as IMDB commenters claim, but it was mostly just to own as many older films by the director as I could get my hands on.