Confused about Cropping/No Cropping for DV to SVCD

[Gav]

I have read the Stickys at the top of this forum for NTSC DV requiring the cropping of 8 pixels on the left and right sides so that the native DV resolution of 720x480 becomes 704x480 and then resizing it to 640x480 to view the video on a computer screen. This will give the proper aspect ratios when viewing. Now if I want to convert the DV to the SVCD format or even the VCD format, do I also still have to crop the 8 pixels on each side to get to 704x480 first and then resize it to 480x480 for SVCD (NTSC) or 352x240 for VCD (NTSC) or do I just take the original 720x480 and resize to the repective resolutions for SVCD or VCD and no cropping is done. I want to be sure I obtain the correct aspect ratio when viewing my SVCDs and VCDs on my television. If I do not need any cropping, then why not?

[bb]

I think you don't need cropping if you're going to create SVCDs or VCDs, because they are shown on TV (with the non-1:1 aspect ratio). But you can easily try it yourself: record a square sheet of paper (a few seconds only), then encode it and see whether width and height are equal on you TV set.

Feel free to post your results ;)

bb