DVD to VCD - 16:9 ratio problem

[Star000Gazer]

Hi all!

This is the first time i post a question here and hope some experts could help me out. I started the VCD making recently, so i have a lot of questions. This is one of the most important one for me right now.

Recently I have obtained a few DVD Rips from somewhere, and now I would like to convert it into VCD. After several trials and errors, i have make a VCD of a hollywood movie. However, the problem is that since the original DVD Rip (AVI file) is in a 16:9 ratio, hence after converted into VCD, which fixed the dimension to 352 x 240, the whole movie has been elongated, and every characters seems so tall and thin (too bad... :<)

I have tried to change the output size in TMPGEnc, but after that the VCD player cannot even play it.

So my question is that if I want to add two top and bottom "black strips" and have the movie in the middle so that the ratio can be kept, what software do I need? How do you all tackle this problem?

Now I have TMPGEnc, Nero, Adobe Premiere. Are they good enough?

Any help is much appreciated!

[gErMy]

Me too .. there's options for stuff in TMPGenc but it's going to take a few try's to get it right... and at 12 hours a shot .... Help!

[gErMy]

Here's some info maybe it'll work, i'm trying it now.

http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgenc.htm

Select Other Settings
Click on Advanced
Change the Video arrange Method to Full screen (keep aspect ratio) if you wan't the movie to look exact the same as the video source.
If you have a widescreen movie and you want it to be fullscreen(no borders) select instead No margin(keep aspect ratio) and TMPGenc will cut it.

[gErMy]

Also you can just stop it after a few minutes and look at the results...
Mpg's can be played when they are incomplete.

[gErMy]

Looks like "full screen - keep aspect ratio" is the way to go to keep the wide screen just right....

Under Setting / Advanced i have ...

Non-Interlace
Top Field first
1:1 (vga)
Full Screen (keep aspect ratio)

And i turned off the Inverse Telecine.... it took a long time to do that the first time so trying without.