HDV Formats...stretching of video

[cgraves]

I posting this because i've wasted a lot of time converting to different resolutions with some very wierd results and I'm hoping some of the experts on here can make sure i'm on the right track here. First, it took me a while to realize that my HDV camera is 1440 x 1080 and this does not really match the standard 1920 x 1080 format. This may have caused me some problems since I would try to downsize to the 720P format of 1280 x 720 and would get some really wierd stretching of the video. So since (1080HD)1980 X 1080 and (720HD) 1280 x 720 = 1.77:1 and (HDV) 1440 x 1080 = 1.33:1 it seems to me that this is why I have problems with video being stretched.
Downsizing to DVD format 720 x 480 works better since it's closer to my
aspect ratio: (720x480 = 1.5:1) HDV=(1440x1080= 1.33:1).
However, to make things look perfectly squared up, will I need to stick to these resolutions only?
1440 x 1080
1280 x 960
1080 x 810
1024 x 768
720 x 540
640 x 480
480 x 360
320 x 240

My camera shoots native widescreen 16:9 and I guessing that this
is not helping matters as .wmv and .divx formats sometimes do not
report the proper sizes.

Hope someone can help me put this to rest....

[pyvo]

Try setting on or off the non-square pixel rendering.
If this is anything like 16:9 vs 4:3 on standard definition (720x576) then this setting might be the key.