[JPSiemer]

This is the first time using your tutorial and I am really bad with all this DAR and aspect ratios for movies. When I encode a dvd I am always busting out a calculator trying to make sure the file stays in the correct aspect ratio. For example, it says on the wiki that if your film has horizontal bars to choose a width of 704 instead of 720. So I choose this value. However, the suggested size of the film then is 704 x 288 for a 2.35 DVD NTSC movie. This is a ratio of 2.44, which is not 2.35. What I normally do is change the size to something like 704 x 304, but I don't know if this is correct? In addition, when I was configuring the bit rates for the encoder, I was not sure what values I was supposed to set it from the chart. Since I went with the 704 x 288 resolution, it looks like I was supposed to set the bit rate to 1816, however, the suggested bit rate is 1362 - but that is for a 704 x 384 size movie?

As you can tell, i am rather confused. I saw one post that said it doesnt matter what you set the size of the video because the DAR will correct this...

1. Step #8 of the Wiki is wrong. My mistake... I just fixed it. All films have horizontal bars... what I meant to write is if your film has vertical bars then you will need to crop them and go down to the next Mod16 value of 704 (or 688 if the crop is more than 16 pixels wide).

2. Just to make myself clear... 1816 is the highest possible bitrate for a resolution of 704x288. 1362 is the highest possible bitrate for a resolution of 704x384. So 1362 is not the "suggested" bitrate for a resolution of 704x288, but it is an acceptable one. You are reading the chart wrong. I agree with Jhcheslik on this one... 1500 is a good number to go with... But you can make up whatever number you want as long as it doesn't go over what the chart tells you.

3. I'm not expert on DAR, but I believe that Jhcheslik's advice on DAR is correct. However, I would like to add that MeGUI should handle DAR correctly most of the time and you should only have to set it manually on few occasions.