Ripbot264 DVD to MKV - Resize/Crop/AR Issues

[zsad]

I'm sure that this is answered somewhere else but I have been searching and searching and can't find anything. And if I do find something just about everyone says something different about the topic.

I am ripping my collection of DVDs and doing some testing on converting them to h.264/MKV. All I want to do is remove the black bars and have an "almost" identical copy of the original. I am only considering compressing them to save disk space since I have over 400 DVDs that I would like to put on my WHS.

I'm using Ripbot264 to do the conversion. I select Crop > Automatically. What do I choose for the Size? Or do I choose "Do Not Resize"?

When I choose Do Not Resize then the video always looks stretched after removing the black bars so I am assuming that I will have to do some sort of resizing on it. But what should the size be? I notice that most mkv files I have looked at for comparison use 640xSomething. After reading dozens of posts I understand how this can't easily be answered but what is everyone else typically doing? I tried a 640x272 resize and this gives the correct aspect ratio but no matter what setting I use on the TV it just doesn’t seem to display the same as the original DVD.

I am testing with the Wedding Crashers DVD (it was just the first one I grabbed). I rip the DVD and then open the vob files in Ripbot264. I then choose Automatic under Crop to remove the black bars. The aspect ratio on the DVD case says 2.35:1. I assume that the original size of the video is 720x480 (from what I have read this could be an incorrect assumption). Automatic cropping in Ripbot264 is removing top (56), bottom (62), left (2), right (2). So I’m taking the original width of 720 and subtracting 4 (for the left and right cropping). This is giving me 716 for a new cropped width. I take 716 and divide it by 2.35 (the aspect ratio) and get 304 (approximately). So I should resize to 716x304? Is this correct or am I completely off? Or possibly doing no resizing is the correct way to go?

Judging from all the posts on the issue and no clear answers I’m not sure if I am doing this correct. Mainly I would just like to know what everyone else does to get a good result in the end. The mkv files are going to be streamed to 3 different TVs via a Popcorn Hour media players.

[Baldrick]

One similar topic is enough. http://forum.videohelp.com/topic359412.html . Just reply to add more information.