I took the old kvcd template and changed the resolution to 352 X 288 and set the CQ to 78. When I play the movie in my DVD Player, it looks kinda blocky, but still better than regular VCDs. Why is this? By the way, the region of my DVD Player and cd is NTSC. Does the resolution affect the outcome on my NTSC DVD Player?

I would have used your old template, but the video looks flat, like it was stretched out, half the size of normal letterbox. Is this because of my Apex AP500WM DVD player? I heard that some Apexs won't play those KVCDs properly.

Hi skullkid51:

If your DVD player is NTSC, change your resolution to 352x240. Not 352x288. That's a PAL resolution.
The Apex is the DVD player that most people are complaining about!
Have you tried the new KVCDx2 template? With the 704x480 resolution?
Give that a try, and see if it plays on your DVD player.

kwag

So setting the resolution to 352 X 288 automatically makes it PAL? I thought just the aspect ratio did. Another thing, I'm not ripping DVDs, I'm encoding my AVI files. When I use the KVCD2x template, it stretches it too much and looks blocky as well. Any suggestions? Sorry, but I'm kinda a newbie to all this.

By the way, the 352 X 480 resolution doesn't display properly on my DVD player, and the 704 X 480 stretches the file and looks blocky. What resolution do you think I should use?

The main reason behind your mpeg looking blocky is the fact that your source material is an AVI, it's already compressed so what ever blocks you've got in there already are going to be amplified.
I did this with my season 3 Farscape episodes and the blocks are noticeable though not a great deal when viewed on a normal TV the blocks are mor prominent on a monitor. Though I did this with one of Sefy's old templates, using MPEG2 at a rez of 352 x 240.
Unless you've got a clear well captured image ie a dvd quality image you're bound to get a certain amount of blocking.

Thanks tarsus! Also, I need to know if this movie would be considered PAL or NTSC. Here are the settings:

23.976fps
4:3 525 line aspect ratio
352 X 288 resolution
78 CQ

I know 352 X 288 is a PAL resolution, but 23.976fps is NTSC film and 4:3 aspect ratio is NTSC. So which is my movie, NTSC or PAL?

Well you've got a bit of a mixed bag there, the rez is PAL, but the aspect ratio is NTSC and the fps is film hmm that's a tricky one there. The only way I can think of doing it is to load the film into TMPEG the load the pal template and do a test encode, probably around a minute or so of the source file, then take a look, then do the same with the NTSC template and comparre the results. Whichever looks the best encode it as that, and the best of luck.