Confused by PAL aspect ratio

Hi,
I'm creating an animation from a series of CGI stills to be eventually outputted as a DV-PAL quicktime movie for use on a DVD to be played on a PAL system.
I'm struggling to understand what aspect ratio I should be saving my stills as - the table and instructions on pages 796-798 of the FCE manual suggest I should start with a still at 4:3 ratio (768 x 576 pixels), and then squash it to 720 x 576 pixels to compensate for PAL stretching it in the other direction during export.
However, when I bring the clips into my sequence, they don't match the aspect ratio of the sequence on the canvas (which seems to be 4:3). The end result seems to be a pillarbox effect of the final animation, rather than seeing the stills stretched back to 4:3 ratio.
Do I also need to set up the aspect ratio of the sequence to match my converted files? Or is there a way of applying PAL's aspect ratio to the clip once it's in Final Cut Express?
Any help gratefully received!!
Derek

i never tried so it's not 100% sure, but this would be the way i would do and i am pretty sure it will work.
if your final goal format is PAL what you should import the animation with a 4:3 ratio (768x576).
then export from the FC export as quicktime movie and then load it on idvd or dvd studio pro. this programs will automatically encode your video to PAL or NTSC (you can choose between this two) with the 720x576 you want.
or you can export to quicktime conversion and choose DV stream -> PAL and then import to idvd or DvdSP, thus you will loose resolution because you are converting and compressing several times, so for better results export to quicktime movie.
tell us if it worked
cheers!
Message was edited by: ilucena

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    When all were taken into Premiere Elements 12 project manually set for PAL DV Widescreen, they looked like the following, no display of distortion.......
    PAL DV AVI Widescreen 720 x 576 (now the pixel aspect ratio in Premiere Elements Properties was shown as 1.4587, not the 1.422 seen in gspot before import)
    PAL MPEG2.mpg Widescreen 720 x 576 (now the pixel aspect ratio in Premiere Elements 12 Properties was shown as 1.4587, not the 1.422 seen in gspot before import)
    Edit Menu/Preferences/General with check mark next to "Default Scale to Frame Size" was in effect.
    As for the red circles stills (1050 x 576 to equate to the square pixel version of 720 x 576 widescreen) did not distort when brought into the Premiere Elements 12 Edit area monitor which is established by the PAL DV Widescreen project preset with the pixel aspect ratio = 1.4587.
    The jpg version of the Photoshop Elements document (.psd) 1050 x 576 pixels (square pixels) looked like:
    And, when this Timeline was exported Publish+Share/Computer/AVI with the DV PAL Widescreen preset, there was no distortion in the export. It looked undistorted as it did before export.
    So, unless I am overlooking a key point here, I cannot see a reason why you cannot use the video sources that you presented for sampling as weil as stills with the 1050 x 576 pixel dimensions.
    The only time I see any distortion possibilities is if you use a player that does not recognize the 16:9 flag that stretches the 720 x 576 to 1050 x 576 for display after encoding.
    Trying to convert Premiere Elements 12 which uses the 1.4587 pixel aspect ratio for PAL DV Widescreen into a Premiere Elements 7 which uses the 1.422 pixel aspect ratio for PAL DV Widescreen is up hill in spite of creative thinking on your side.
    Please review and let me know if you are seeing another different from what I am reporting with the samples that you posted.
    Thank you.
    ATR

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