Thoughts on aspect ratio and cropping?

[bcontario]

First of all, thank you for this great software. I've gone through almost 10 apps/packages to find a simple and consistent way to convert videos the way Videora iPod Converter works. Thank You!!!

I'm actually converting to watch on a Motorola Q smartphone (WM5) and have the MP4 and AAC codecs installed. My preference is to convert movies to 320 pixels wide (max 240 high), but even at this size most converters still want to use MP3 instead of AAC, so to get decent sound you use 128kbit MP3 for a 2-hour movie and you end up with 100MB of audio!?!? 64-bit AAC is great for this, so I can get a decent looking and sounding 2-hour movie less than 300MB now.

The question I have is about if I am converting an anamorphic 2.39:1 video in a 720x480 DVD mpeg file to a 4:3 video file using MP4-CBR, what settings are going to give me good video quality (no aspect distortion) and not waste space in the file?

I have tried converting such a widescreen DVD video to 320x180, and this seems to look good for some reason, but there are still black bars on top and bottom, and I do not know offhand if the black bars compress really well and take up little space in the file or if I can keep good quality but have significantly smaller files by cropping off the black bars.

Any thoughts?

-B

[msopnet]

If it's 2.39:1, you should convert to 320x134. You may have to test out a few cropping sizes to get rid of the black bars. But I don't think that the black bars will add much size to the file.
Also, I tend to use Mono sound for my iPod since it sounds just as good and uses half the space. Although, if you hook your smartphone to a TV or something, this may not be the best.

[Midiman]

Crop 56 pixels off the top and bottom each and resize to 320x144