AutoGK Questions. Quality, Resolution and Anamorphic

[austin316]

Ok, I'm looking to take some of my dvds and convert to divx for playback on a 16x9 television and a widescreen laptop and I have a couple of questions.


1. What is better to use for encoding, file size or target quality? (I want great looking rips with digital surround and file size takes a distant second place).

2. What resolution do I want to select if I pick say 80 for target quality? Leave it at Auto Width or select the dvd width of 720?

3. Is there anyway to make the output anamorphic, for enhanced played on widescreen tvs?


If any of this does not make sense, let me know. thanks!

[manono]

Hi-

1. Depends on the percentage you choose. With your 80% example, the Target Quality choice will be a little bit better, but don't be surprised if you sometimes get some really big file sizes.

2. They will be the same. The default Target Quality width is the same as the source, or 720 for DVD sources, unless you change it in the Advanced Settings.

3. I think so, but I'm not positive. Go into the Hidden Options, check the "Tune Autocrop parameters" box and set Threshold to 0. Check the "Override input AR" box and tick "Original". Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Or try it yourself and report back.

[austin316]

I'm a little confused on what anamorphic means. If I have a 1.85 A/R DVD, if it is anamorphic, I will no bars on my screen, right?

[manono]

Hi-

Why'd you ask question 3 above then?

If I have a 1.85 A/R DVD, if it is anamorphic, I will no bars on my screen, right?

If you have a widescreen TV set, then yes, a 16:9 DVD of a 1.85:1 movie will play on your TV with no black bars. There actually are small bars on the DVD, but they're usually hidden by the TV's overscan.

And since you have no idea what 16:9 anamorphically enhanced means, then ignore my answer to your questiion 3 above. AVIs are ordinarily 1:1. A 1.85:1 AVI at say, 720x384 will also ordinarily play on a widescreen with no black bars. If it's coming from your laptop, it may have small black bars. Nothing to worry about. I don't know what the concern is about black bars anyway. Don't you want it to play with the proper aspect ratio? Read this:

http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm

And this:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/

[austin316]

Basically I would want the A/R to look the same as the DVD. IE --> You can't tell if I'm playing from my pc (the divx file) or from a DVD.

Can divx be output in 480p?

[manono]

Well, 16:9 DVDs get resized from 720x480 to roughly 854x480. 720x480 AVIs ordinarily just get scaled, and people look tall and thin, or stretched vertically, as in that first Austin Powers picture in the Doom9 Aspect Ratio article. Since you'll be playing it through your laptop, you can use a software player to do the resizing for you. Media Player Classic, among others, can do it. If that's what you want to try, then follow my instructions in my first post.

AVIs are almost by definition progressive. You can make interlaced AVI, but I don't know anyone that does it. So, if you have a height of 480, then it's 480p.