i'm having trouble creating an SVCD with the correct aspect ratio when played on my sony dvd player.

i have encoded the mpg in premiere to 640x480 29fps using AVISynth. Then after that i used TMPGEnc to encode to SVCD to 480x480 i tried 4:3 and 1:1 aspect ratios with the same problems. I then use TMPGEnc to multiplex or whatever into a VCD format. after i multiplex into the VCD format TMPGEnc always presents me with an error saying something wrong with the file that might cause error on some players. I then use Nero 5.5 to burn the VCD. When i play the final product on my Sony DVD player i get about 1/4th of the frame. i get the top left corner of the video and am wondering am i doing something wrong or is the DVD player just not compatible with the SVCD to VCD conversion. I've also tried using Fix12c15 and it didn't help at all.

You really are makeing your life more difficult..First off why are you encodeing to Mpeg at 640+480 in premier then Re-encodeing it to mpeg at 480+480 with Tmpgenc???You are ruining the Quality by Encodeing the file over and over again..To find out the correct aspect ratio we need to know what the original AVI resolution is...then scale it down to 480 by 480 while keeping the same aspect ratio...And you are probably getting a "Buffer-Underflow error" while Muxing the file to a Fake VCD, this can cause problems while playing cuz the data packets aren"t the same size for Mpeg2 and VCD..what might cure this error is to NOT use the "Multiplex" to change the SVCD to a VCD header, try useing the "Merge&Cut" it will just put a VCD header on the file without trying to re-packetize the file and causeing the error...And it could be possible that your dvd player will not play at svcd resolutions....

umm actually i should have been more clear. In premire the original project is at 640x480 then using avisynth and TMPGEnc i encoded to 480x480 straight from the project.

i will try the cut and merge technique though... how are you guys doing that using hex editor?

hopefully it works because i've wasted 5 expensive CDR's trying this crap.

There is a function in TMPGEnc File Menu called MPEG Tools, and there you have the Merge & Cut tab.

Perhaps using bbmpeg to multiplex in VCD format will do the trick? I have never tried making a VCD with SVCD resolution so I can't help you more than this.

Ronny