Widescreen aspect problem converting avi to dvd

[spiritgumm]

converted a Pal letterboxed 4:3 avi download to Ntsc 16:9 dvd. I think the original source was letterboxed, probably widescreen (the movie was released as 1.66:1). When I play the result with TV in widescreen mode, it's too stretched out (too fat, not too tall).
Tried adding side borders, but overall picture gets smaller. Then tried cropping off the letterboxing (60 pixels top and bottom), it looks fine in widescreen. Should I do that or what?
Attached a sample from original avi.
sample.avi

[Pinstripes23]

Yea if you are converting to 16/9 WS NTSC you have to add borders to the side to get the correct ar of 1.66:1. That's the only way to fit the ar into a 1.78:1.

I don't know if you use avisynth but the code after cropping away the black would be around:

lanczos4resize(672,480)
addborders(24,0,24,0)

Then encode to 16:9 NTSC

[spiritgumm]

did a sample, looks good on the TV, thank you mucho. I'm curious how you figured that out.
Here's the script I'll use:
AVISource(etc)
Crop(0,60,0,-60)
lanczos4resize(672,480)
addborders(24,0,24,0)
assumefps(23.976,true)

[jagabo]

720 * 1.666 / 1.777 ~= 675

Then he rounded to the nearest mod8 size (better compression, fewer artifacts).

[Pinstripes23]

did a sample, looks good on the TV, thank you mucho. I'm curious how you figured that out.
Here's the script I'll use:
AVISource(etc)
Crop(0,60,0,-60)
lanczos4resize(672,480)
addborders(24,0,24,0)
assumefps(23.976,true)

I calculated it pretty much how jagabo did it. I didn't add crop numbers in the script cuz on your sample I came up with different ones. But as long as it looks good to you that's all that matters.

[spiritgumm]

Should I have not cropped so much?
Or given the amount I cropped, would that change the size of added borders?
When I say it looks good, that doesn't mean it is good. I thought it looked good with just cropping, but adding borders was a definite improvement over that (when I could compare them on TV).

[jagabo]

I don't have the video here anymore but I seem to recall 60 lines off the top and bottom was about right. Within a pixel or two.

[Pinstripes23]

Should I have not cropped so much?
Or given the amount I cropped, would that change the size of added borders?
When I say it looks good, that doesn't mean it is good. I thought it looked good with just cropping, but adding borders was a definite improvement over that (when I could compare them on TV).

Well it's just a matter of preference. I don't have the sample anymore to double check but I think I came up with 58 that didn't crop into the picture. It's not a huge difference, just a few pixels.

[spiritgumm]

Thanks, that's a relief. I didn't want to encode it a 3rd time.
I had the impression that the original dvd was letterboxed widescreen (I saw a still image with subtitles overlapping the image and bottom border), so I wasn't sure why it wasn't fitting with the letterboxing.