Final AVI is larger (in resolution) than the DVD ?!?

I just finished encoding a video from DVD and noticed that the final AVI has a resolution of 720 x 544. If DVD resolution is 720x480, why is my output ending up LARGER than the input? AutoGK did this both in Quality % mode, and Fixed Size mode. I understand that you CAN stretch video if you want, but why would it be automatically doing that ? It seems to me that you only LOOSE quality when you stretch images and video.

Hi- I don't know. Do you lose more quality when increasing the vertical resolution when compared to decreasing it? Most films are widescreen, so a 720 horizontal resolution ordinarily results in a decrease of the vertical resolution. For a fix for fullscreen 4:3 DVDs, you might set a fixed horizontal resolution of 640, and then you'll wind up with 640x480, or some such.

I don't know why this happens (aspect ratio discussions give me a headache :)), but GK behaves the same, when ITU-R BT.601 standard is unticked. This distorts the DVD aspect ration by 2.5% on certain DVDs.It's mentioned in the guides . If you enable it in AGK (hidden options is it?), you will get an output of 720x528, which is closer. The rest of the difference is probably due to PAR(?). Try and search in the forums for aspect ratio, PAR and DAR, there have been countless discussions about it, and I'm not best qualified to answer you :) Actually, as is obvious, setting the input PAR to 1:1 fixes it (doh). I vaguely read that AGK now supports this, but I don't know to what extent though