Change aspect ratio of a movie from 4:3 to 16:9

[darinmar]

What program or function could I use to change a movie's aspect ratio?

[signals]

You really can’t, this question comes up several times per year. If you are trying to fill a widescreen tv with image from a 4:3 DVD, it can only be done by stretching or squashing the picture and adding black bars all around or by cutting off content from the top and bottom of the image, none of which will improve the quality.

[huston]

I have the same question but perhaps for a different reason: I have found several movies that are Letterbox. The movies are widescreen but they are seen by DVDFab as 640x480. I end up with black bars all around my movie... and that looks stupid. I have found that Blender (a free software - very powerful, very non-user-friendly) can do it. I can even take a 480p to 1080p, not that I'd want to: The image isn't up-rendered but the size of the file is much larger. Downside to Blender is that while I was able to get rid of the black bars and have a true 856x480 video, the video is out of sync with the audio and the fps seem to be off. I think this is still the way to go to change your aspect ratio but you'll have to do some experimenting and Google searching/YouTube video watching. If I figure out the new issues I'll let you know... please do the same for me if you find a way.