Subtitles getting stretched by MPG video aspect ratio

[DRP]

When adding subtitles to AVI with VirtualDub and then frameserving to TMPGEnc for encoding to SVCD, how do you avoid getting the subtitles elongated when the video is stretched out horizontally during playback due to the video aspect ratio flag?

For instance I am making a standard PAL SVCD of dimensions 480x576. That is the size of the display I make in VDub, add subtitles to and then frameserve to TMPG. The problem is that when it gets played back, the 4:3 aspect ratio flag stretches the 480 dimension out to 768 and it stretches the subtitles out along with it until they look wrong.

How is this avoided?

[Ejoc]

I use this flow:

Resize
Add Subs
Encode as 1:1 aspect ratio (I resized it already, no need to do it again)

[DRP]

I use this flow:

Resize
Add Subs
Encode as 1:1 aspect ratio (I resized it already, no need to do it again)

But surely the end result can't then be played in a DVD player? For my DVD player at least, the MPEG size must be (for PAL) one of 352/480/704/720 x 288/576 otherwise the player simply won't recognise it as a valid VCD and won't play it. The 4:3 aspect ratio must therefore be used to get the video to the right aspect ratio for display which also stretches the subtitles.

I don't think I understand what you're suggesting. I can't see how I can encode with a 1:1 aspect ratio and still get the end result to play in a DVD player at the right aspect ratio.

[DRP]

Here's what I'm doing...

Video is AVI 576x320 (1.8 AR) and I want to display it via SVCD in 16:9 ratio (with letterboxing) on a 4:3 TV c/w subtitles in the black letterboxing border.

I've used the resize filter in VDub to resize the image area to 448x400 (I'm allowing for my TV's overscan as well here) with a horizontal crop (left + right) of 7 to bring it back from 1.8 to 1.778. Then I expand & letterbox the image inside a frame size of 480x576 (everything is PAL), add the subtitles and frameserve to TMPG for the MPEG encoding.

The trouble is that SVCD needs a 4:3 aspect ratio in it to stretch the image back out to it's proper 768x576 (1.333 AR) dimensions - which also is stretching the subtitles under the image. Whilst the image *needs* to be stretched to look right, the subtitles don't.

I need either a way of squeezing the subtitles when they go into the image at the VDub stage or isolating them from being distorted when the 4:3 aspect ratio stretches the image out on playback.