DV -> VCD aspect ratio question (TMPGEnc)

[magic75]

I am a bit confused on the aspect ratio setting in TMPGEnc 2.58. I have tried all full screen and no margin settings, and I end up with the same result.

I have captured a piece of PAL video from a DV camera, and then encoded it with DivX. Now I am trying to make a VCD from this DivX file, but the aspect ratio is a bit confusing to me.

PAL VCD is 352x288 and PAL DV is 720x576, which is not a perfect match. I have tried to resize a still picture from the DV(DivX) original down to the width of PAL VCD (352) to compare and then I end up with a picture 352x281, i.e 7 pixels less vertically. Now, looking at the still images from both the VCD and the DV, the aspect ratios of the DV looks most natural. The VCD image is slightly stretched (of course) vertically.

What happens when I play the VCD in a standalone DVD player? Does it stretch the image both vertically and horisontally, so that I get the correct aspect ratio (4:3) ? Or how does it work? The problem is that I currently don't own a DVD player, otherwise I could of course just try and see what happens. I am giving the VCD away, so I really want it to look good....

[geek rock]

yes, the DVD player will stretch the image to fit.

that's why SVCD is 480 x 480 pixels.. it doesn't matter that the picture looks horribly vertically stretched on the PC screen, the DVD player stretches it so it appears correctly.

just out of interest, why not convert the original DV file to VCD instead of going to DIVX first?

what you're doing is like taking an uncompressed WAV file, encoding it to WMA then encoding the WMA to MP3. you're compressing it twice.

-Mark

[magic75]

Thanks!

Yea, I know it sounds a bit stupid. The thing is that I don't have the original DV file anymore. I had to do the capturing on a friends computer, since I don't have a firewire connection on mine. So the best possible way for me to transport it to my harddrive was to encode it with DivX, put it on a CD and etc...

Thanks again.

/// Janne