Question I've not seen asked about anamorphic encoding

[micheal81]

I've done a lot of searching and have not found an answer to this. If I have overlooked it, then I apologize.

I'm converting my copy of GI Joe to AVC to play on my 5.5G iPod. In the AVS Script Creator I have to use 1.77 NTSC as my input DAR. I auto crop to 0, 60, 0, -66. I check resize and change it to 640. I check the clever anamorphic box and set it to resize to mod16. The suggest resolution (mod16) box now automatically checks and the grayed out box says 320. If I now encode the video, all will work correctly.

My question is this. Is it ok to uncheck the suggest resolution (mod16) box and change it so it resizes to 640, 480? Unless I misunderstand something, won't this allow a higher quality encoding than the suggested 640, 320? Since it is anamorphic, won't it still play back at the correct aspect ratio? Am I thinking wrong and there is no point in doing this or it will not work like I'm thinking?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[AMED]

There is no point doing it, all you are doing is up scaling the picture at encode (so more bitrate will be needed) and then up scaling it again (both vertically and horizontally) at playback so it can display it with the correct aspect ratio.

Keep it simple, crop the black bars, encode and let the player just resize it horizontally on playback.