avi to dvd question about AR

[Norco]

hello, doin some avis to dvd and wondering if i should pick anamorphic 16:9 or 4:3 with borders added, the avi is 608x336, im thinkin borders added to keep the aspect ratio closer to the source as anamorphic would be resizing the video more losing more quality or it doesnt really matter? lol.. thanks

[setarip_old]

Hi!

I would think you'd want to make it the same format as your original DVD.

Then again, why don't you just make a backup of your original DVD?

[Nick]

@ Norco

If you have a widescreen TV, definitely go with 16:9 Anamorphic. There is no point letterboxing it to have your TV upscale it on the fly.

If you have a 4:3 TV, it may be worth doing 4:3 encode if your AVI is particularly long. I wouldn't let the difference in quality from resizing concern you too much. The only advantage of 4:3 is that the black bars take very little bitrate to encode, so if you're trying to fit masses of video on a single disc to watch on a 4:3 set, this way may have its merits.

@ Setarip

The AVI container is used for things other than DVD backups - it is therefore not a safe assumption that if a user has an AVI file, they should necessarily have the same video content on a commercial DVD.

[setarip_old]

@Nick

Of course you're correct. I guess when looking at the resolution, I thought it must be a cropped movie from a widescreen DVD...

[Norco]

its a captured tv show