I feel your pain and anguish!

"Is this quite a hard question?" For, the answer is - yes. Not the question!

I need to understand your workflow a bit better.

I DID read your post when you made it, and my heart sank. Because for me there are just so many project setup variables that I am getting quite light headed.

Now, there NEAREST I've come to what you are doing, and thence maybe a clue for you is the following:

1] Videoed in 16:9

2] Edited in VegasPro8 with setting as 16:9

3] Rendered out final 16:9 AVI

4] Brought this into DivX Convertor ( see? DivX - not your format)

5] Played this on a MP4 device and 16:9 is good.

OK . . .

When I need to DO a 4:3 for the same device I set my settings as 16:9 and brought the 4:3 to FIT Top and Bottom. This produced neat classy black bars each side of the screen on the DivX device ( actually an MP4 capable )

Ok all this is good.

Now, I want to play a 16:9 on my Nokia phone - which has a 4:3 display. So this time I force a 4:3 onto the 16:9 format and render out in 4:3. This time I end up with black bars TOP and BOTTOM. I then used these Black Bars to fill with ticker tape text. It works.

The point I am laboriously trying to make here with these 2 examples, is that at some point I too need to FORCE the correct aspect ratio for the device I wanted to play the video on. Now this MAYBE a way forward for you. Bottom line here, I HAVE been where are at. I have tried often to render the "right" "wanted" aspect ratio, but IF the media doesn't contain the 16:9 or 4:3 flag that that device would need, then it WILL miss that info and play blindly just what is in front of it.

If this has been at all valuable I am glad. If it hasn't, you wont surprise me!

But yes I did read it and yes, these format workflows can be a real pain to get right/correct. Sometimes we take for granted just WHAT we want and expect the s/w to comply.

Regards

Grazie