dvd to divx/xvid/mpg4 - crop and scale?

[cnelson87]

I'm looking to eventually (soon) build an htpc and would like to rip and convert my dvds to an mpg4 type format (currently using xvid). I'm starting off with dvds of tv shows, fullscreen 4:3 (Simpsons, South Park) and widescreen 16:9 (Stargate), and eventually movies (16:9, 1.85:1, 2.35:1, and???).

my question is NOT about what tool should I use, which one is the best, and how do I use it, what bitrate, etc... I have most of that figured out, and what I don't, I can.

my question is about cropping and scaling. not how, but if and why?

South Park is fullscreen 720x480, presented as 4:3, or effectively 640x480. I've been cropping 16 pixels off the total width to remove the black edge distortions. Should I keep it at 704x480? or downscale to 640x480? or maybe upscale back to 720x480?
Stargate, at 16:9 (anamorphic, I think), has been a little harder to nail down. a screen grab shows it to be 853x480, which is about as close to 16:9 as possible. edge distortion is negligible, but since I need to keep everything in 16 pixel chunks, should I crop or scale the width down to 848? or to fit on a tv, does it need to be scaled down to about 720x400? I really don't want to scale the height if I don't have to. or, even weirder, do I need to scale it to 720x480 and set some sort of 16:9 flag to make it stretch?


and I haven't even gotten into the myriad of various widescreen movies and what size they should be. that will be fun!

bottom line, I'm trying to get maximum quality out of my rips by keeping the pixel size as close as possible to the original and using a fairly generous bitrate (around 1200 for 640x480 and 1600 for 848x480), and re-using the original ac3 audio (don't think that has any bearing here). the only piece of the puzzle I seem to be missing is pixel sizes and ratios. I understand tv pixels are "thinner" than computer pixels and how that relates to dvd mpg2 encoding, but does that matter with divx/xvid/mpg4 rips?

ok, end of long-winded, uhh, long-winded-ness.

[cnelson87]

double post - please delete

[cnelson87]

tripe post - please delete

[RabidDog]

It all depends HOW you will play these files back .. from computer or on divx player..capture at 848x NN sounds like wastage nothing is broadcast in that res .. stick to either 640 or 720/704 IMO.