Aspect Ratio Question

[Gai]

I just got a DVD burner (and a new computer, for that matter) and I've been playing around with my copy of Boondock Saints. I ripped with SmartRipper and used DVD2AVI to make it TMPGEnc compatible. I encode at 2-Pass VBR in MPEG-2 quality with the highest quality rate, so it looks pretty fantastic.

However, I can't duplicate the original's aspect ratio. The video comes in Widescreen letterbox - 2.35:1 and all I see TMPGEnc letting me make are 16:9 aspect ratio movies that are noticeably squished. The movie sort of looks wider left to right and a bit squished top to bottom. Now that I've got this 4.2 gig mpeg-2 file on my hard drive, can I resize this through other methods now without losing quality or is there a program that will let me encode the VOBs to the exact aspect ratio I want?

EDIT: I guess what I'm really getting at is: what resolution do I encode at to have my resulting MPEG-2 come out with its 2.35:1 aspect ratio?

[setarip]

When using TMPGEnc, under the "Advanced" tab, set "Video Arrange" to either "Center (maintain aspect ratio)" or "Fullscreen (maintain aspect ratio)"

Let us know of your success ;>}