first VCD not really successful-what went wrong?

[JoHNY]

Hi,

As I couldn't wait any longer to try out making (S)VCD's (I haven't
got my capture device yet) I thought I'd try making a VCD from some
internet downloaded mpgs.

Following vcdhelp.com I used TMPGenc to convert them to 352x576 and 25
fps, to put them into PAL form. This made an 11Mb file into about 50 or
70MB file. Loading them into VirtualDub and looking at the file
properties reported right resolution and fps. (the mpgs were all
different sizes before, and mostly 29.975 or 24 fps)

Next I loaded up Nero 5.5 and selected VCD from the wizard. I dragged
and dropped the few I converted. I also appeared to have put one on
that I never converted by mistake.
When I told Nero to burn, it said 'Encoding Video' for over 40
minutes. I was a bit surprised at this I expected a 'normal' burn
time. (there was only about 189Mb of mpgs)
Then it did a speed measurement, and got the result of 145.6x
21,840Kb/s which looked quite favourable. Then it did the actual burn.

When I played the VCD, all the 'converted to PAL' mpgs were very
letterboxed, a very narrow full width picture, but the last
unconverted one was nicely full screen and pretty good quality too.

What did I do wrong ?
Is it normal for Nero to do an encoding cycle ?

[JoHNY]

forgot to say:
I was playing the VCD in my DVD player.
The 'converted' clips all looked normal aspect ratio, if a little small, when windows media player played them.
Also, they were letterboxy when TMPGenc was converting them. I thought I had read that that was normal somewhere.

[vitualis]

Load the standard VCD PAL template with TMPGEnc.

PAL VCDs use a framesize of 352x288.

Regards.