How to convert HDV to dvd full resolution 640 x 480? I have some content recorded in hdv, which is anamorphic. I only recently came to understand what that means exactly. Concerning the video size, it is 1440 x 1080, but the pixels are not square; they are wide. The effect is that the video displays the same as full HD 1920 x 1080.

I currently don't have a need for these particular videos to be in HD. Standard DVD definition is suitable. I also prefer that they are cropped to full size frame, instead of widescreen. So I would like to convert them to 640 x 480.

I have used handbrake to try and accomplish this but I am not sure how to make the best settings for this. Here's what I have come up with, but I am not sure what exactly I am getting out of it:



I don't necessarily mind if the video is anamorphic or not as long as it consistently displays 640 x 480. I don't know if it makes a difference, but this will be web videos in an HTML5 player. Currently, the player is designed to declare only the video width, so the height is whatever the ratio-correct number should be. I honestly don't know if this works for anamorphic videos.

All I really want here is the best settings to convert this HDV to an Mp4 that will be shown in an HTML5 player with the full screen aspect ratio at a maximum resolution of 640 x 480.
Whenever you publish something to end-users you ALWAYS want square pixels, everything else WILL make problems.

So just convert your anamorphic video to a square pixel aspect ratio. Handbrake should automatically handle that, the settings you have right now should output a video with square pixel aspect ratio. Just add the vertical resolution.

Is there any reason why you would want to crop your video to 4:3? A down-scaled 16:9 square pixel resolution would equal to 640x360 for a "SD" resolution (bare in mind there are several different DVD standards) and I would suggest you to use that resolution and don't just crop your video unless you have an artistic reason for that.

If handbrake is unable to handle the non-square pixels you will have to reside to use either a full fledged video editor or alternatively FFmpeg.