How to convert a 2:21:1 video to 16:9 DVD using ffmpeg? I have a MPEG-4 Simple Profile video with size 720x288, pixel aspect ratio of 2:21:1 (ffmpeg says SAR 1:1, DAR 5:2).
I'm trying to use the command I usually use to convert it do DVD format:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.avi -target pal-dvd outputfile.mpg


This produces a 720x576 video which plays fine with video players on the PC. But when I try to burn this to a DVD (with 16:9 aspect ratio), the image is stretched. Playing around with VLC, I understand the video has a pixel aspect ratio of 2:21:1, so when reproduced at 16:9 images are vertically stretched.

I would have expected "-target pal-dvd" to fix this automatically, but it does not. I read some information on the Internet and I think the key is about setting the correct sar/dar, but I tried some combination and I was not able to obtain the result I want, probably because I don't perfectly understand the logic to determine the right values to set.
It's fine for me to have black bands over and below the image, but the video aspect ratio must be preserved, of course.

By the way, I'm getting the same results with avconv instead of ffmpeg.

Thanks in advance.
Having seen the sample, this is the command

ffmpeg -i in.avi -vf pad=720:576:0:144,setdar=4/3 -target pal-dvd out.mpg


The video is square-pixel, so scaling is not required. The frame should be treated as 4:3, not 16:9 (which isn't the right ratio for this movie anyway).



For widescreen playback in the PAL standard, your rendered raster has to be 1024x576. So,

ffmpeg -i in.avi -vf scale=1024:288,pad=1024:576:0:144 -target pal-dvd out.mpg


scale=1024:288 --> the video is scaled to the final display width.

pad=1024:576:0:144 --> vertical pixels are added to make it to 1024x576.

-target pal-dvd --> this will rescale the video to 720x576 and set a DAR of 16:9.