New to this, Ripping DVD's with smartripper, encoding with easyencoder, converting avi to mpeg with Cucusoft, burning SVCD with nero. My question for anyone is: when I play on my standalone player the picture is very narrow, how do I increase the size to full TV size? in the ripping, encoding, converting or burning?

The mpg file that you get after encoding your avi should be 480x480 (or 480x576 if you are in a PAL country), which is tall and thin compared with the original.

The player then "expands" this horizontally on playback to produce the correct aspect ratio on the screen.

I'm ot familiar with some of the tools you are using, but if there's an aspect ratio setting in your encoder try adjusting that.

The mpg file that you get after encoding your avi should be 480x480 (or 480x576 if you are in a PAL country), which is tall and thin compared with the original.

The player then "expands" this horizontally on playback to produce the correct aspect ratio on the screen.

I'm ot familiar with some of the tools you are using, but if there's an aspect ratio setting in your encoder try adjusting that.

I don't have an answer but had this problem before. I was due to the fact that the source was a 'wide-video' (16:9 instead of 4:3). The result was somewhat (not very, but still irritating) picture on a standalone player. There must be some claver people at this forum who can give an advice ...

First i would sugest Not useing those second Rate Programs to encode your SVCD, and you are Useing To many Steps which is Lowering the Quality Dramitcly..The Easiest and One of the Better ways to Make a SVCD out of a DVD Rip is to use these 3 Simple Programs, "Smartripper" which you are allready useing, and "DVD2AVI, which will extract the Proper Audio track and Make a Frameserver File(No you do not need to make an AVI file this Is an un-needed step that will lower the Quality of the Final SVCD) then use an encoder Called "Tmpgenc" (Not my First choice But the easiest to use and the Quality is good)..You First rip the DVD with Smartripper then Load the Vob files into DVD2AVI, then go to "Audio" in DVD2AVI and set it to "Track One" then set under "Audio" to "Dolby Digital" to "Decode" and to "Dolby Surround Downmix" then under "File" go to "Save Project" and give the Project file a Name and then it will Make a Wav audio file and a D2V Project file, Now Run TMPGenc, and the Wizard should pop up, choose one of the "SVCD Formats" (Pal or NTSC) then click "Next" then load the D2V file from DVD2AVI as the Video source and load the Wav file as the audio source, now you can Basicly Click "Next" till the end and it will Start encodeing your SVCD, and when it is Done you will Need to cut your Movie into Parts so it will Fit on 2(Or More) CD-R"s you can do this by going to "File" to "Mpeg Tools" to "Merge & Cut" and From here I"m sure you can Figure it out..This method will produce Much Better results that the method you are useing, and the Picture should Look Proper in the TV Screen....good Luck

Thanx for advice will try everything

By the way, when I answered your question I assumed you mean narrow in the sense of not wide enough.

But if as the next guy says, if you mean narrow as in black bands top and bottom then it is indeed a 16:9 issue.