I mentioned earlier that I had a real tough time converting Divx file to MPG suitable for creating VCD. This is not the case anymore. I have found a script that does it all quite nicely called divx2cvcd.sh. I have fixed the script slightly as it didn't work with PAL movies. The script depends on mplayerand transcode.
I have found it is a waste of time to try converting the video from NTSC to PAL. I ended up with the audio and the video being out of sync. I discovered recently that my DVD player (Pioneer) can do this on the fly. I just had to set the output mode to PAL instead of Auto.