VCD2DivX: resolution questions

[augi]

I have a VCD and I want to convert it to DivX. The resolution of the video is 352x288. It is captured from the TV and the original signal was PAL.
I don't know how the VCD deals with the resolution. In order to convert it to DivX, the Doom9's conversion guide says I have to change the resolution to 352x264 (the original conetent was 4:3). Why is that? When I play the VCD to a stand-alone DVD/VCD player, it does somekind of resolution conversion? I read in the aspect ratios explanation page
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/aspectratios.htm

that a SVCD PAL has a resolution of 576x576 and when it is played, it's width is stretched by the 4:3(=1.333) factor and it's viewed as (576*1.333)x576=768x576.
What happens with VCD then?

[FlimsyFeet]

PAL VCD has a resolution of 352x288, when it is played it is stretched horizontally on the TV by 9.1% (=1.091).
NTSC VCD is 352x240, and is the opposite, it gets "squeezed" horizontally by 9.1% (=0.909).

PAL SVCD is 480x576 (not 576x576); it gets stretched by 60% (=1.6). Or, just to confuse things, if it has a DAR flag set to 16:9 and everything works as it should, it should get stretched to 113% (=2.13)!

NTSC SVCD, 480x480, 33% stretch for 4:3 (=1.333) or 78% stretch for 16:9 (=1.778).

AFAIK VCDs (MPEG-1) cannot be given a 16:9 DAR flag, but they can be manually made to be 16:9 anamorphic.

[jsoto]

You can see a very good explanation including the reasons for this strange ratios here (http://www.uwasa.fi/~f76998/video/conversion/)
jsoto