<p>I have 1440x1080 AVC/h.264 video that should be displayed with a 4:3 aspect ratio (which would correspond to square pixels).  I'd like to burn it to a Blu-ray disc to be playable in Blu-ray players, but my understanding is that <a href="https://www.videohelp.com/hd" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Blu-ray specifies that 1440x1080 video should be treated as 16:9</a> (which makes no sense to me, but I digress).</p>
<p>Are there any software tools (whether for Windows, Linux, or macOS) that can pillarbox AVC/h.264 video <strong>without lossily re-encoding the existing content</strong>?  That is, it seems conceivable that 15 columns of 16x16 macroblocks could be added to each of the left and right sides to make it 1920x1080 without going through a lossy decode/encode cycle.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-12-19T07:19:35.370Z
I've found https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/4331 which requested such a feature for ffmpeg, but it sadly was closed as won't-fix without comment.
jamesdlin
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-01-04T14:49:57.117Z
Does this answer your question? [Using ffmpeg to add height (as black bars) to video file without quality loss](https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/24755/using-ffmpeg-to-add-height-as-black-bars-to-video-file-without-quality-loss)
TAbdiukov
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-01-04T20:53:10.797Z
@tabdiukov Thanks!  That's definitely a very similar question, although the answers there don't help (they do a full re-encode), and I'm not asking specifically about ffmpeg.
jamesdlin
<encoding><software-recommendation><h.264><aspect><bluray>
Pillarboxing AVC/h.264 video with minimal re-encoding?
jamesdlin
# Pillarboxing AVC/h.264 video with minimal re-encoding?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-12-18)

I have 1440x1080 AVC/h.264 video that should be displayed with a 4:3 aspect ratio (which would correspond to square pixels). I'd like to burn it to a Blu-ray disc to be playable in Blu-ray players, but my understanding is that [Blu-ray specifies that 1440x1080 video should be treated as 16:9](https://www.videohelp.com/hd) (which makes no sense to me, but I digress).

Are there any software tools (whether for Windows, Linux, or macOS) that can pillarbox AVC/h.264 video **without lossily re-encoding the existing content**? That is, it seems conceivable that 15 columns of 16x16 macroblocks could be added to each of the left and right sides to make it 1920x1080 without going through a lossy decode/encode cycle.

**Tags:** encoding, software-recommendation, h.264, aspect, bluray

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I've found https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/4331 which requested such a feature for ffmpeg, but it sadly was closed as won't-fix without comment.  
> **username_1**: Does this answer your question? [Using ffmpeg to add height (as black bars) to video file without quality loss](https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/24755/using-ffmpeg-to-add-height-as-black-bars-to-video-file-without-quality-loss)  
> **username_0**: @tabdiukov Thanks!  That's definitely a very similar question, although the answers there don't help (they do a full re-encode), and I'm not asking specifically about ffmpeg.  

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