Widescreen alternatives

[audiolos]

Hey guys

Have refrained myself from posting by trying to constantly learn about ripping and Handbrake, and I must say I got the gist of it pretty quickly and I seem to have found some answers but not totally happy with the outcome. I am using Handbrake for Windows on Vista OS and the support I have found are distinctly all for the MAC based user.

I will be primarily be viewing the movies for an iPod G5 and would want movies to cover the whole estate with the Widescreen feature Off.

My problem lies with ripping movies that are widescreen.

They’re great when it’s full screen widescreen movies that cover the whole estate using the 1.78 iPod preset, but with ones with horizontal bars are giving me problems! That is because using that preset and cropping the horizontal bars, the picture stretches to make up for the black bars. I understand that the MAC version has aspect ratio feature that would perhaps make this problem of mine not that difficult.

If anyone would like to see the result I am after, go to the iStore and preview the Pirates of the Caribbean 2 movie (also if anyone has purchased Widescreen movies from iStore perhaps they could tell me the resolution as a simpler resolution).

Currently I have been successful with a few settings in terms of result but only one worked on the iPod.
720x320 but can not play
480x208 not entirely sure if there is still stretching but works for the iPod (are there any settings with higher pixel rate for widescreen?)

Handbrake settings
Encoder : H.264 (iPod)
Audio encoder : ACC
Picture settings : Auto Crop ON
Avg Bitrate : 1500/2-Pass encoding
Audio Settings : 160
Audio Mixdown : Automatic (don’t touch it…not sure whether to choose Stereo or Dolby for this)

Fair effort for such a pedantic notion but I'm sure I am not the only one and for those who also would like to know would appreciate the help. Thanks guys, once again Handbrake is brilliant.

Perhaps there can be a preview screen and aspect ratio incorporated into newer versions. (Note : Understand that it is hard to say a certain resolution for every movie because movies with horizontal bars all differ in height.)

[audiolos]

720x320 Mpeg4

Is this the solution!? Didn't think anything but the H.264 codec would work on iPod's due to another program my brother has used in the past and caused problems with Mpeg4.