Need help with anamorphic/resizing

[snyft]

Ok so this is the deal i got a source that on the cover says it 16:9 Letterboxed but when i crop it i get only 2-4 pixels of blackbars at top and left/right. With a crop like: Crop(4,2,-4,0). So when i crop it like that and add it to encoding it complains about it not being mod16. Ok so now is the question should i resize it to the original resolution? (720x480) giving me 20 something % aspect error and tell it to be anamorphic or should i just resize it to like 704x400 with a 2.5% aspect error and show it as anamorphic or just leave the anamorphic alone? I'm really lost here guys please help me :)

[smuthy]

It would help if we know what 'it' is

It depends what you want - the anamorphic route will preserve max quality. The 720x400 is probably a recomendation for a resolution assumining 'square pixels' so you should not use anamorphic.

Square pixels is what players assume generally if there is no aspect ratio info encode in the file ie a 16:9 file will have a pixel ratio of just that ie 720x400

[DigitalDivide]

I have a 4:3 film which I'd like to encode. I cropped 16 off the total for the sides and 16 total from top and bottom. So I'm left with 704x464. I don't select resize. My question is when using 4:3 sources should I be selecting anamorphic in MeGui? I've never been quite sure about that.