Can I remove black bars from pocketpc films

[iantib]

Hi,
I have 2 films, both .avi I think. I have used "windows movie maker" to compress them down so that they fit on a 512 sd card, but they both have black bars at the top and bottom of the picture. The movie doesnt use up the full screen.
Can anyone please advise me how (if possible) I can remove the black bars so the movie takes up the full screen?
I have a hp ipaq 2210 I think the correct screen size is 240 x 320.
Money is a bit tight so if I need to buy some software could someone please recommend the best software application to use.

p.s. it would be a huge bonus if the solution works on .mpg movies as well.

Thanks for your help and have a Merry Christmas.

[leonardo90]

You can try PockedDivXEncoder, which is much better than Movie Maker to compress videos. You can reduce image and sound qualities, and if not an AVI film, it can covert to this smaller format. it can fit it to the PPC screen, and it cuts the movie too. I had "Girl Next Door" (2 hours and 30 minutes I guess), and it had only 123 Mb. Here is the link:
http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=972
But you need to have BetaPlayer or Pocket MVP (I recommend the Pocket MVP
for AVI, and BetaPlayer for the others).

[AnswerDude]

Another way is to just convert it normally in letterbox format, and use Betaplayer to play it (the latest unstable version can play many formats including mpeg). Betaplayer has zoom option of fit screen plus 10%, 20% and 30%. It will pretty much turn letterbox into fullscreen, if the video is properly encoded, you will barely see the quality difference.
http://betaplayer.corecodec.org/

[iantib]

Thanks for that. The zoom feature looks like it will work great. But betaplayer doesnt seem to recognise my video (that was produced by windows movie maker). When I view this file its type is listed as 'windows media audio/video file'. I have the unstable version, 'unstable.0.095'. I think its a .wmv file.

[AnswerDude]

For Windows Media format, you need to download and install additional plugin;
http://picard.exceed.hu/plugins/

[iantib]

AnswerDude you are a STAR. Thanks very much. I have installed the plugin and its working great now. Thank you very much and Have a great Christmas.