What resolution to encode with Xvid/WM9 to watch on 16:9 display?

[Sgt_Strider]

I might get a 16:9 display sometime in the future and I was wondering what resolution should I encode at to best watch it on those televisions? I'm planning to take my DVDs and encode it so that I burn multiple movies on to a DVD and then watch it on the TV. Thx for your help.

[trbarry]

If you are planning on an HD display then you probably want to keep full resolution of the DVD, with the possible exception of cropping any black bars. And you can't really add any resolution, so I would just leave them as they are.

None of my own experiments in trying to upscale before encoding really accomplished much of anything useful.

- Tom

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by trbarry
If you are planning on an HD display then you probably want to keep full resolution of the DVD, with the possible exception of cropping any black bars. And you can't really add any resolution, so I would just leave them as they are.

None of my own experiments in trying to upscale before encoding really accomplished much of anything useful.

- Tom

TRBarry I'm new to this and so I'll need a bit more details. Since XVID doesn't have an option like the one in WM9 to choose such as "input video resolution", what res should I choose for my output with gknot or dvx? I'm ripping NTSC dvd videos which is 720x480. Do you happen to have a HDTV at home? By cropping out the black bars, wouldn't that mean that you now have a full image?

[trbarry]

I have a Toshiba 55" HD RPTV that I use with an HTPC to play DVD's and a HiDTV card for HDTV.

I mostly don't rip DVD's and when I do I'm apt to just use DVD2ONE and not do anything very fancy. So I can't be much help in that area.

But when I re-encode my HDTV captures I don't worry about aspect ratios much. I just play with Zoom Player and adjust on the fly.

I also don't use Gordian Knot. But what I'm suggesting is to just delete the resize step in the generated avs file if there is one.

Hopefully someone else will step in here since it's obvious it's been awhile since I used that. ;)

Keep in mind though that compressing for HDTV has sort of a different set of rules. Almost anything in a 1 CD rip will probably not look great on an HDTV zoomed out to 55" or so.

- Tom

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by trbarry
I have a Toshiba 55" HD RPTV that I use with an HTPC to play DVD's and a HiDTV card for HDTV.

I mostly don't rip DVD's and when I do I'm apt to just use DVD2ONE and not do anything very fancy. So I can't be much help in that area.

But when I re-encode my HDTV captures I don't worry about aspect ratios much. I just play with Zoom Player and adjust on the fly.

I also don't use Gordian Knot. But what I'm suggesting is to just delete the resize step in the generated avs file if there is one.

Hopefully someone else will step in here since it's obvious it's been awhile since I used that. ;)

Keep in mind though that compressing for HDTV has sort of a different set of rules. Almost anything in a 1 CD rip will probably not look great on an HDTV zoomed out to 55" or so.

- Tom

How about cropping? Btw if I don't crop or resize, would xvid just encode the input resolution of the vob files?

[trbarry]

I like to crop off all the black bars and borders.

When this can't be done exactly because you need multiples of 16 or whatever then you can also use my FillMargins() filter.
( www.trbarry.com/Readme_FillMargins.txt )

- Tom

[Sgt_Strider]

Btw if I don't crop or resize, would xvid just encode the input resolution of the vob files?

[symonjfox]

IMHO you should keep the resolution as it is. I live in Italy and here, HDTV aren't come yet, but Sat TV is very very used. For example when I capture from my PC Sat board, I record, PVAstrumento to correct errors and then encode video AS IT IS (also at 352*576 or 480*576 or 704*576 .. depends on the channel I record). I also have to check if the video is INTERLACED or not (and if it's interlaced, i leave it as it is and I encode it in INTERLACED Xvid, to keep the best quality).

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by symonjfox
IMHO you should keep the resolution as it is. I live in Italy and here, HDTV aren't come yet, but Sat TV is very very used. For example when I capture from my PC Sat board, I record, PVAstrumento to correct errors and then encode video AS IT IS (also at 352*576 or 480*576 or 704*576 .. depends on the channel I record). I also have to check if the video is INTERLACED or not (and if it's interlaced, i leave it as it is and I encode it in INTERLACED Xvid, to keep the best quality).

I was thinking of just encoding my ntsc dvd rips with xvid at 720x480 but I remember reading a article from doom9 stating that the pictures will look squished. http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm.

The article mentioned that dvd resolution at 720x480 which has a aspect ratio of 1.5 is impossible. He mentioned that the picture will look squished. If that is true, then how am I suppose to re encode the dvd rip into the exact resolution of the dvd? I'm also confuse in whether the true resolution of dvd is 720x480 or 850x480 as stated by doom9.

[symonjfox]

Originally posted by Sgt_Strider
He mentioned that the picture will look squished. If that is true, then how am I suppose to re encode the dvd rip into the exact resolution of the dvd?
Yes, I forgot to say that I use FFDSHOW for playback and, while playing those files, I manually adjust aspect ratio (keep in mind that 720*576 ISN'T 4:3). I read somewhere some long long technical stuff about aspect ratios.

I hope that someone will introduce Aspect Ratio Flag into MP4 container ASAP, It's impossible that MPEG 2 has it and MPEG 4 not. I read a lot on the forum about this, but I don't complain about it. It just would be nice :D

[MrDarcy]

Attila, the MP4 *HAS* a kind of aspect ratio flag, but it seems that no Windows encoders and players are able to use it.
I did some tests with menconder/mplayer ported from Linux and they work.

I started a thread about this in General forum (Widescreen info in AVI)

What I still haven't understood is how mencoder/mplayer use the Display Aspect Ratio, but the only MPEG4 header I "discovered" contains the Pixel Aspect Radio.
I also capture from DVB-S and I keep the original resolution of each channel (except cropping black borders, but without any resizing), so it would be nice to set the pixel aspect ratio to have the playback resized without intervention.

Ciao.

[symonjfox]

You're right, but I don't understand why Mp4creator60, for example doesn't have an option like ... -ar 4.3 or -ar 16.9 or a custom aspect ratio.

I heard that aspect ratio problem is just for AVI files, but MP4 container has its own flag. I think it isn't implemented yet.