Have a couple of 480 x 480 mpg2 files. Used videoredo to cut out the commercials. Normally with this stuff I'd bung it into DVDAuthorGUI and presto.

This time I thought I'd get a little cute with the payware I have and tried DVD Architect. Not thinking, I just knocked up a menu and burned a disk at default settings. Of course, the result was rubbish. Bitrate on one source file was barely 2,000 and the other was about 5,300. And DVD Architect bumped it up to defaults.

What I'd like to do (more steps than essential I suppose) is crop the source so I get the FULL picture within a 4:3 safe area, then burn it without Vegas / DVD Architect trying to up the res to 720 x 480.

Sure I can crop it in Vegas, but is that "clever"? What res would you recommend that I render out as in Vegas?

As far as DVD Architect is concerned, sure I can use 360 x 480 (never tried that before) but what does it need to be fed to make that work?

Cheers.