svcd resolution

OK, I am fairly new with the svcd stuff. I'm a little bit confused about the resolution. My question is if I want to re-encode vcds into svcds, what should I do with the resolution? PAL vcds are 352x288, and PAL svcds have 352x576, the vertical resolution is twice of the original vcd. So I don't know what to do exactly, can someone explain?

Why do you want to re-encode a VCD to an SVCD? You could resize the picture, but no matter what you do it will probably look worse than the original. and actually SVCD is 480x576. 352x576 is the resolution of CVD, a less popular format. (Less popular meaning fewer DVD players support it)

here's why 

Yeah, when you first hear converting vcd into svcd, it does sound dumb. But I have my good reasons. Basically, I have these foreign tv series. Each eposide is roughly 50 minutes and comes on 1 vcd. What I want to do is saving some cds by re-encoding 2 vcds onto 1 vbr svcd. (since they don't quite fit unchanged) That way, I can save half the cds I need to use to burn them. In the past, I've encoded them into divx with good success. But of course, I can't play them back on a standalone player. That's why I want to do vbr svcd. Also, my player is capable of playing cvd standard. Anyway, my confusion is basically about this weird vertical resolution. (weird in terms of vcd resolution) Oh yeah, my source is vcd pal, so it's 352x288. I figured the best resolution to use would be 352xXXX. But do I just stretch it out vertically like that? cuz it doesn't seem right. help? :)

Less NTSC Region 1 players you mean... With Pal Region 2 Standalones, CVD is the same as SVCD in terms of compatibility. Also, any 352 X 576/480 file burned on DVD -/+ R disc gonna play. Try do this with 480 X 576/480 (svcd framesize...) @shinakuma8: There is no reason to do this, you don't gain something. Keep your vcds as is

ok, let me say this again 

The reason I want to do this is so I use less cds. I can cut down 40 cds to 20. Requires less physical space (aka my cd holders) to store them. Now, can some one answer my question? should I used the 352x576 resolution? because it doesn't seem right.

The easiest way is to make a test CD using a CD-RW disc. That way you'll see how it's going to look on your TV and you'll see if it works. I'd say that you should choose a resolution closest to the source as the VCDs are probably already heavily compressed. I don't think that major upsizing would do any good to the image quality in this case. Also consider using a filter like Convolution3d or SmoothHiQ to get rid of some of those blocks. I don't know if Marc FD's MPEG2Dec3 (see the Avisynth forum) supports MPEG-1, it also has some post-processing capabilities.

help on SmoothHiQ 

Any guild on how to use SmoothHiQ with TMPG? It would be nice if I can use the filter to remove blocks and noise. The built in noise remover for TMPG is way too slow.