PAL SVCD to PAL DVD AR/Letterboxing help

[BitChucker]

Hi everyone,

I've been wanting to convert some PAL SVCDs I have back to DVD now that I have a DVD writer. I found DJRumpy's guide excellent for it but the only thing he doesn't cover well enough is converting a PAL SVCD to a PAL DVD. The main thing he has left out is what to do about resizing and aspect ratio for a PAL DVD. I of course understand that the size for a PAL movie is 720x576 but he only touches on NTSC resizing amd adding letterboxing or not dependent on the aspect ratio being either 2.35:1 or 1.85:1

The film I'm converting has a 320 pixel vertical res when all the letterboxing is removed so that says it's 2.35:1 as far as his guide is concerned, of course I expand the horizontal res to 720 but the vertical res has got me stumped. I want to encode it 16:9 and keep the aspect ratio true but there's no explanation on what to resize to or how much letterboxing to add to a PAL DVD with 2.35:1 AR.

If Aspect Ratio is 2.35:1 resize to 720x360, and add letterboxing to complete the horizontal resolution. If your video is NTSC, you would resize to 720x360, and add a 60 pixel high letterbox on top, and 60 pixel high letterbox on bottom:
Since we’re converting our example SVCD from PAL to NTSC DVD, and our movie has an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, we’ll be resizing to a full 720x480, without any letterboxing. If our movie, however, had an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, we would be adding a 60 pixel letterbox on top, and one on bottom.

The AR on my SVCD is 2.35:1 but I want it to be PAL of course, if I resize to 720x360 and add borders to complete the vertical res to PAL (add 108 pixels top and bottom) my DVD comes out squashed so that's obviously wrong. I also tried just resizing to 720x576 without adding borders but that was wrong again.

My question is, what do I resize to to keep the AR true for a 2.35:1 PAL DVD? I have a few discs to convert and would appreciate anybody's help. I tried resizing to 720x480 and adding borders of 48 pixels top and bottom but again that was too large (but close!) Resizing to 720x440 and adding a 68 pixel border is about spot on but can anyone explain why this is so? Is there a calculation I need to know about? I've posted in the newbie section because I'm new to the board and new to converting from SVCD to DVD - I have searched both google and the forum but haven't seen anything applicable.

Thanks!

[BitChucker]

I found another DJRumpy guide with regard to sussing out AR, my apologies for taking up forum space. I did look, I promise!

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t174200.html