downsizing - which resizer?

[rahzel]

from what ive researched, a lot of people prefer using bilinear to downsize and lanczos3/4 to upsize. i have 2 xvid files that are 1024x432 and i want to downsize them to DVD res. 1 of them is 2hr and 44m and the other is only 1hr and 50m. the video thats 2:44, i tried using lanczos but some parts looked jaggy and there seemed to be some edge artifacts. so i tried using bilinear instead and it obviously looks softer but a lot more clean, and imo, it looks better overall. i then used both bilinear and lanczos on my other source and this time, there did not appear to be any edge artifacts or noticeable jaggies and it looked a lot better to me.

when converting to DVD, i got my bitrates from videohelp's bitrate calculator and the longer video gave me 3327 and the shorter video gave me 5147. is it ok to use lanczos for downsizing as long as the bitrate isnt too low? does the resize option have anything to do with the compressibility?

[foxyshadis]

The progression of softer to sharper is roughly:
bilinear, spline, bicubic, lanczos
It seems most everyone here uses lanczos exclusively for up and downsizing, but it's too sharp and halos are too obvious for my tastes. It will certainly cause aliasing more often, but it depends entirely on the sharpness of the source.

DVDs are made to be rather soft, though, so you can't really go wrong with bilinear or spline16, or a softer bicubic. Sharpness doesn't work terribly well on crt TV screens.