Changing the Aspect Ratio of Xvid

[Lemur]

Ugh. So I get my hands on some out-of-print BBC shows for the wife. So we pop them in the Divx-compatible DVD player. So the aspect ratio is all messed up — should be 16x9, but it's somehow squeezed into a 4x3 ratio, looks all squozen.

So the wife says, "You can fix that, right?" Thus begins a half-hour of searching through the DVD player's menus, seeing if there's any way to adjust aspect ratio. There is not.

Then it's time to hit Google, and Doom9, and every video resource I can find. I wind up using VirtualDub ('cause I likes my open-sauce) and the full Xvid codec (which is also open source). But the two won't play with each other. Thus beings a solid hour's worth of sub-menus and tweaks, trying to find what's causing the show-stopping errors.

The end result? I got it to work, ultimately, by tweaking the "codec friendly multiple" number in a fourth-level buried menu. THEN it worked.

I'm sure her Highness will not appreciate the geek blood I have spilled over this problem.