For those who create 320x240 divx files, isn't that too small to view on a PC screen

[catback]

Hi,

I've noticed that a lot of people here create divx files using the 320x240 resolution, including myself. The picture quality has always come out great. However, vieweing a divx file at this small a resolution on a PC screen is kind of annoying.

How do you guys view your 320x240 divx files? Do you keep it at that size and just deal with it or do you scale it up manually when viewing it? I've tried scaling it up in Windows Media Player but the picture looses it's sharpness when you do this.

Just wanted to see if anyone has found a solution other than encoding at a higher resoltion (tried 640x480 but interlacing became a big problem).

Thanks.

[ProfDrMorph]

Either sit about 2 meters or more away from your monitor and/or use a TV screen. This way it looks "better" because the picture is either blurred ( TV ) or you can't see the details to say that the resolution is so low ( sitting away at least 2 meters ).

[Ceronian]

If you are almost blind, its okay watching this low resolution on a pc-screen. Lower resolutions than 576x... are not suitable for good quality (my personal opinion, i am a little bit spoilt:))

In case of watching it on TV, it should be okay.

[xzquala]

in my honest opinion, that is way too low of a resolution.

I encode in only three resolutions.

512xXXX is for when I plan on watching the movies on my laptop. the screensize is fixed to 1024x768 pixels, and laptop vid cards are not that great at resizing. I set media player to *not* switch resolution in full screen mode, and instead it just doubles the pixels. that way I can smoothly playback any bitrate that divx3 or divx4 will throw at it.

for my desktop, on the other hand, I will encode at 640xXXX. using gknot you can make almost any movie look *great* at this resolution, and still have it fit on one cd. for those movies over 90 mins lon, I will first encode at 640xXXX resolution, and then watch it. if I don't like the results, then I will go to 2 cds and up (yes I said up) the resolution to 800xXXX. I used to think it was ridiculous to increase the resolution of a video, but someone who had a pretty well respected opinion on this site recommended it to me for my 2 cd rips.

so, why would I want to use only 640xXXX and 800xXXX? well like doom9, I dislike smoothing. I dislike smoothing filters, I dislike the smoothness that results from forcing your vid card to resize "on the fly". if I can spend the time to do all of the resizing during the encoding process, then I will do it there instead. I see no point to ripping something if you're gonna do a bad job of it. not that I think that anyone is doing a bad job. as a matter of fact I have seen many avi's in 320x240 that looked great. they are tv shows, they were created by using a tv capture card, and optimal resolution for a quality capture is down there, 352x240 or 320x240.

as fas as ripping a dvd is concerned tho, I dunno... If I dl'd a movie and it was encoded at such a low resolution, then I would watch the first 2 minutes of it and delete it. and I have done this too. what a waste of everyone's bandwidth that was.

oh, yeah, btw- there never has been and never will be any excuse for distributing (making the rip and allowing ppl to dl it) a rip where you didn't bother to crop out the black stuff. I don't think anyone at this site would do that, but what a waste.

ok, sorry for my ranting, I have a terrible headache right now.

if you felt like I was picking on anyone, I wasn't. I was just ranting.

[Fox Mulder]

Originally posted by catback
Hi,

I've noticed that a lot of people here create divx files using the 320x240 resolution, including myself. The picture quality has always come out great. However, vieweing a divx file at this small a resolution on a PC screen is kind of annoying.

How do you guys view your 320x240 divx files? Do you keep it at that size and just deal with it or do you scale it up manually when viewing it? I've tried scaling it up in Windows Media Player but the picture looses it's sharpness when you do this.

Just wanted to see if anyone has found a solution other than encoding at a higher resoltion (tried 640x480 but interlacing became a big problem).

Thanks.

If you think interlacing is a big problem you can use a deinterlacing filter "if" the source is really interlaced(i.e. video source), otherwise you can just "force film" if the source is telecined to restore the original 24 fps. And if you don't like the scaling and your divx is like 640 by xxx, you can set your desktop resolution to something like 640x480x32 to watch the movies :)