Encoding 4:3 DVD to 16:9 AVI

[ringo12]

I have dvd-r's from my panasonic dvd recorder that unavoidably are coded in 4:3 (many recorders wont flag for widescreen, as you probably know), although they should be 16:9. played through a tv this is fine as the tv will resize to fit the screen, on a laptop they appear tall and squeezed in.

I'm looking for a simple program that will let me rip these to h/x264 with 128k mp3, that will automatically correct the ratio to 16:9, without zooming and cropping part of the picture or creating black bars.

Also, what other settings would you recommend? I'm looking for the best way to encode 1½ hour movies to about 750Mb avi's.

2-pass encoding?
what frame size for standard def picture on a 32" widescreen tv?

[zenzen1]

http://www.indocomp.com/Video-to-HD/Video-to-HD.html

[Baldrick]

I would probably just convert to a 16:9 resolution like 640x360, 688x384, etc . Use for example handbrake, staxrip, megui(using the one click-option), xvid4psp to convert to mp4,mkv h264 with mp3 audio.

[jagabo]

x264 has a Sample AR setting. Set it to 16:11 for PAL DVD sources encoded with a 720x576 frame size. Not all players will respect this though.