Hi

After much deliberation and a littlemaths I have managed to get a VCD that plays well on my widescreen (16:9) television.

I have been using TMPGEnc for ages now and have always struggled to reduce the black bars such that when its played on my 16:9 tv, I get the correct aspect ratio for my conversion.

In the past I have used settings under video arrange method that are of the form "full screen (keep aspect ratio). This produce a movie that has the correct aspect ratio on a standard 4:3 tv, but when I place my tv in 16:9 manually, you end up with a very wide picture and everyone looks fat (so to speak).

I then realised that if I could make my converted file too high and all of the characters really thin ; on switching the tv to 16:9 the whole screen would be strecthed similar to playing an anamorphic DVD and hence I would end up with a very good picture in the right aspect ratio.

My movie was 640 x 272 which is as close as you can get to 2.35:1. I decided to turn into a std VCD of 352 x 240.

Working this all out the effective resolution of my image on my widescreen tv in 16:9 would be 352 x 4/3, which comes out at 469.333...

Hence my effective height would need to be 469.333 / 2.35 (original aspect ratio) which comes out at 199.

Hence in tmpgenc I set everything as standard for NTSC VCD and using a video arrange method of "Center (custom size). The custom size typed in is 352 and 199.

This results in a squashed up picture on a 4:3 tv but on switching my tv into 16:9 I get a really good picture in the right aspect ratio.

I decided to share this with everyone as I believe it makes life easier and who knows I could have made mistakes here. Please let me know if thats the case.

-Darren