Square pixel footage to DVD - scale and quality problems

i've got footage from DVDs that i've captured using handbrake. This gives me quicktime movies (mp4 format) that are 720 by whatever the height of the original movie - minus the black bars. So for a letterbox clip that i've captures the dimensions are 720 x 336.
I want to edit the clip in final cut pro and burn back onto DVD. The mp4 clip has been ripped using a high data rate and the quality is fine. If I set up the sequence settings to be identical to the clip (720 x 336, square pixels, field dominance none, output mp4) then it looks fine in fcp and doesn't need rendering.
But this file is no good to use in DVD studio pro as it stretches the clip vertially to meet the 720 x 576 DVD resolution.
If i change the sequence resolution to 720x576 it seems to letterbox it fine and now it needs rendering, but when rendered i get a lot of boxy artifacts appearing in the video (the footage has a pure blue background so really suffers from any compression issues)
How do i set this up to make a DVD
DP Mirror door G4 867Mhz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Arrrrrrr!
Sounds like we have arrrrselves a pirate!
Wether it be 4:3 or 16:9 you'll have to be puttin' that footage in a sequence that studio pro will be able to digest. You're going to have the bars regardless.
Figure on making it right for your final output.
I guess it's some kind of TV.
Still you can put it one of those two conver to MPEG2 and it'll work for ya just fine.

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Sorry for not responing for a few days, but I runned the benchmark you'll send me. The main results (dee details attached file):
53,6, secs Total Benchmark Time
6,4, secs AVI Encoding Time
14,2, secs MPEG Elapsed Time
33, secs Rendering Time
Since the potential problem is my hard disk, inaddition, I runned HDtune (hopefully it will help pinpionting the problem):
disk1: avarage transfer rate: 94MB/s, acces time 13.8ms, burst rate 185MB/s
disk2: avarage transfer rate: 85MB/s, acces time 14ms, burst rate 157MB/s
disk3: avarage transfer rate: 73MB/s, acces time 13.9ms, burst rate 183MB/s
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Dear all,
does anyone know how to create an H.264 (in an mp4 wrapper) video using compressor that will allow me to resize an uncompressed 1920x1080i (square pixel) footage to 720x576, whilst still retaining the 16:9 aspect ratio and not needing to use padding.
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Very easy.
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I can't answer directly, since I don't work with that size video, but I **think** your PAR may be off
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i know this is not the normal/prescribed way to do this.
i have some QT files that have been output from various programs at at 720 by 480 with square pixels.
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hi.
thanks for the feedback.
the are some programs like Flash that are widely used in the animation filed and that only output Square pixels. I know that Flash files have been used in broadcast work.
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"Legality and copyright issues aside...".
The vids that I'm downloading have embed codes but I stopped using links several months ago because the links often when dead.
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