Please Help Me with Letterboxing in TMPGEnc

[JoJoMcQueen]

I have a question, but it's very hard to explain. I'm going to write it in the steps I'm going through, and you tell me if I did it right or where I went wrong.

1) I have a video that is 352x240.

2) I cut off 8 pixels from the right side because it's a dead spot. (Just black nothingness) I do this using the Clip frame option in TMPGEnc.

3) I then use TMPGEnc to encode it into an MPG using the "Center (custom size)" video arrange method.

This also changes the horizontal resolution to 320 pixels to match the width of a TV.

4) I do my own calculations to make up for the 8 pixels I cut out from the horizontal part of the resolution.

I take the original horizontal pixel count (352) and subtract the new 320 pixel count. I then take the number I receive from that (32) and subtract it from the vertical pixel count (240). Then I make up for the 8 pixels I cut off of the side by adding 8 pixels to the top. (Because the original picture expands horizontally when you cut off part of the right side, I decided that it would be best if I expanded the vertical pixel count by 8.) Does that all make sense?

5) I come out to 320x216 to get a full screen effect.

Now, I don't know if this is correct since the movie started out widescreen. I understand that cutting out part of the horizontal resolution means you have to expand the vertical and will make it "less widescreen."

Does any of this sound right to anyone? If I did something wrong, please tell me how to correct it.

[Truman]

352x240 (I assume avi)
cut 8 from the right --> 344x240
resize to 352x228, add borders top 6, buttom 6
or (better)
crop to 344x238
resize to 336x216, add borders top 8, left 8, buttom 16, right 8.
Calculated by FitCD.