Cropping black bars?


I have a DivX movie in 16:9ish format, which has black bars top and
bottom making it a 4:3ish video file. If I play this in Front Row, it
fits to screen and so I get an inch of black on the sides as well!

I've tried masking the bars in Quicktime [1] and it then looks perfect
in Quicktime Player, but in Front Row, the aspect ratio is distorted. If
I play the masked video fullscreen (on a MacBook Pro) using Quicktime, I
get (smaller) bars top and bottom and it fits to the edge, but in Front
Row it has black bars at the sides but fits to the top and bottom, ie
everyone looks too tall and skinny.

What am I doing wrong? I thought Front Row used Quicktime to play stuff,
so why am I getting different results?

I have DivX Player and Perian installed; I don't know which of these is
responsible for allowing Front Row / Quicktime to play DivX (or whether
they can play it out of the box anyway) or whether either of these is
causing the problem.

Thanks,

-zoara-




[1] Copy video frame into image editor; remove video content and set as
white, leaving black bars as they are; save image; open movie in
quicktime, select movie properties > video track > visual settings;
import and invert mask; save.


--
No 3G. Fewer megapixels than an N95. Lame.
.

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