movie aspect ratio question

[MurderCityDevil]

I honestly don't know what sub-forum video editing questions would go, but here's my question nontheless. I recently got a new ipod and for the first time have enough space to put movies on it. All my movies are in 16:9 format, but as we all know, the iPod screen is 4:3. I can encode the video with a set resolution, but then the image is squashed. Or I can leave the aspect ratio as is and have black bars. Is there any real method to convert 16:9 to 4:3 without cropping or squashing? Logic tells me no, but I just wanted a definitive answer. Thank you!

 

[drew726]

Definitely no. Without cropping or rescaling, only thing left is to create pixels out out nowhere.

 

[jubbie]

Moving from one aspect ratio to another is essentially cropping the picture.

So 16:9 to 4:3, you'd be cutting the sides to keep the height the same. While from 4:3 to 16:9, you'd either crop the top and bottom to maintain the width or extend the sides (with more detail) to fill the screen.

 

[drakken]

what you can do is called pan & scan if your willing to go through the movie frame by frame and pick what you want cropped. Some software used to be able to do this based on info from the movie. Most modern movies at 16:9 are actually cropped down from a wider plate as it is. 2.35 x 1 I think.