Adding black bars to MKVs

[richardp2020]

I have an old 720p video file from my video camera that I cropped down to remove some unwanted footage from the top, after which I converted to an mkv. The file is now 1280*688 (or 688p), my new blu-ray player plays MKVs natively, but they have to be standard resolution (1080p, 720p, 576p, 480p). Basically what I want to do is add 16 pixel black bars to the bottom and top of my video file, so that it is playable in my blu-ray player. I've demuxed the audio and video, so I have one AC3 file and the video h264 file that I want to work on. Can anyone suggest an easy way of doing this?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

A solution would be getting the 30 day fully functioning trial of Adobe After Effects directly from Adobe (need to register) and use a 1280 x 720 composition with black as background and add your video as layer in the middle and export it again.

Sorry, I don't know of another application to do it more simply, except maybe using MPEG Streamclip and stretching the video vertically in its output options.

 

[jackerin]

Ok, I don't know if this will actually work, but I had a look at the Export to Quicktime setting in MPEG Streamclip and you can actually set a negative crop, which gave black bars at least in the preview window. I don't want to start doing test since it's in the middle of the night here...

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Ok, I don't know if this will actually work, but I had a look at the Export to Quicktime setting in MPEG Streamclip and you can actually set a negative crop, which gave black bars at least in the preview window. I don't want to start doing test since it's in the middle of the night here...

Did learn something new today and it worked. Thank you.

Export settings:

Result: