Messed up aspect ratio

[nathanbuckeye]

I'm trying to encode avi's using TMPGEnc. The source is a t.v. show that was broadcast in Austrailia and may or may not be PAL. I have an NTSC t.v. Anyway, I've tried encoding it using every setting combination I can think of to fix it, but everytime the aspect ratio gets screwed up. When I burn the resulting mpg file to a CD and play it on my player - the picture is "zoomed in." Not unwatchable, but not right. The source picture quality is so-so to begin with and it's even worse when it's zoomed in.

In my experimenting, I've been mostly using "keep aspect ratio" settings as I just want it play exactly as the avi plays on my computer, but it changes it no matter what I do.

Is there perhaps another encoding software program that's better suited for this job? Like I said the video quality isn't that great to begin with, so I don't think it should matter whether I encode it to VCD or SVCD. Either format will fit on one CD per episode.

Please help!

Thanks,
Nathan

P.S. my DVD player can convert PAL to NTSC automatically, so I've even tried encoding it to PAL, keep aspect ratio - still no luck.

[wee haggis]

Try experimenting with the Advanced> Custom settings in TMPGEnc and then check it out in File>Preview to see what it looks like before you commit to the encode.