Hi,
Thanks for responding Jay! I understand that there may be some letterboxing, but by using the included Main Concept AVC/AAC preset called Apple iPod Video 640×480, you get windowboxing (https://bit.ly/EtOVe).
I made a custom preset that works to get letterboxing. However to get this I could only change one parameter, the width, to 720. Any other changes caused the encoded video to not import onto the iPod. I was looking for a way to adjust the other parameters to achieve a better quality encode, and have a file that the ipod will import successfully.
Here are some images I made that show that you can indeed encode at 720×480 to import into your iPod:
640×480

720×480

Any help with those other settings would be great, maybe there is something else besides the Main Concept that I’m not aware of.
Thanks again!