aspect ratio, and other CCE related questions

[nl011010]

this is how i do dvd>vcd conversion with CCE. smartripper > dvd2avi > vfapiConv > cce. for tmpgenc i go straight from dvd2avi. when i use CCE 2.64 to encode VCDs, i select 'half horizontal resolution', 'half vertical resolution' and choose the aspect ratio, 4:3 or 16:9. i encode the audio separately with ssrc and toolame, then multiplex them with TMPGenc. when i play the resulting mpg with WMP, everything looks fine, the aspect ratio is kept the same. but when i view it with powerdvd, or my dvd player, the aspect ratio is stretched???? this doesnt happen when i encode with TMPGenc! i really want to use CCE for its speed advantages, because i usually have 3 or 4 movies to encode consecutively. (Netflix, hehehe)

another problem i have with CCE is that i notice the quality is not as great as TMPGenc, even when i encode with 1262 video / 112 audio bitrates. what should i use for the quality settings? my image quality is set at the default of 25. for the anti-noise filter ive used 2, 3, and OFF. the quality for all three look the same to me. what am i doing wrong?

oh, one more thing. i almost always use the forecd film option in dvd2avi, then use the vcd ntsc (film) template in tmpgenc, then burn the s/vcd. everything comes out fine and plays smoothly. what is this 3:2 pulldown step ive read about?

[gaihan25]

Is it stretched very much?
Some stretching is normal because in Video Media Player,
it is displayed with the aspect ratio 1:1,i.e. the original
resolution which (in case of 4:3 material and probably 16:9 material,
too)doesn't necessarily meet the aspect ratio chosen when encoding,
and in DVD player it is stretched to the aspect ratio that was chosen
when encoding.

As to your question about CCE:At video,CCE normally is better than
Tmpgenc,I don't know why it's not in your case,maybe the bitrate
is too low.For audio encoding,you should always you Tmpgenc because
its audio encoding quality generally is regarded as better than CCE.

3:2 pulldown is used when film material should be played back as NTSC.
The movie is still saved at the film frame rate but converted to
the NTSC frame rate on the fly when played back.