I'm having some trouble with resizing and aspect ratios. When I play a dvd on the computer and it's a standard 4:3 video I still have some small black lines at the top and bottom of the screen, but the picture doesn't look warped or distorted in any way. I'm assuming that a tv and computer monitor aren't the same proportions. Or can it be the 1024x768 resolution of the monitor? When I make a divx I've found that if I resize the video and keep the aspect ratio the image seems stretched a little. Like 1.333 and keep it at 1.333 it seems like the hieght has been streched, 384x288 is an example. Isn't that a PAL resolution? But 352x240, which is NTSC for VCD the ratio changes to 1.333 input and 1.467 output. What would be the correct size to make this look correct? I would assume keeping the aspect ratio, but that gives a distorted look. Or am I doing something wrong with my resizing? I'm looking to connect my pc to a tv set and play the movies and I want to keep the correct look for when they are on the TV. Should this mean that reguardless of how it looks on the monitor I should keep the aspect ratio true? Or is the movie really like that but NTSC picture just chops off top and bottom so you don't see that? I don't really know. For something cool check out this link http://www.w3geek.com/movies/pilots.htm Thanks
Ok...am I correct in guessing your DVD is in "widescreen" format? Widescreen uses a 16:9 aspect ratio, so you should encode it to DivX using a similar ratio to get the best picture. Note that when displaying 16:9, the monitor or tv will add bars at the top and bottom. If 16:9 video is being displayed as 4:3, the height will appear stretched, like you described.