dvd rip better than original using Xvid?

[bmok]

A coworker's husband told me he rips a dvd and re-encodes it in Xvid in a higher resolution and the resulting movie is much better than the original. Is that possible? What part of Xvid does that? Is it like the good old line-doubling technique being employed here? The husband said he hooks up his computer to his projection tv through the VGA port, no HDMI, no DVI. It seems to make sense. I'm gonna see with my own eyes this weekend.

Anybody knows this process pls share. Thanks.

[Dark Shikari]

Resizing a movie makes no sense because you're just wasting bits; it can just as effectively be resized during playback.

The only way the quality would improve is if he's playing it back on an HDTV whose original DVD player isn't an upscaling player.

[bmok]

...
The only way the quality would improve is if he's playing it back on an HDTV whose original DVD player isn't an upscaling player.

I don't quite get this part. What's an upscaling player? Sorry for my ignorance. To get better quality out of DVDs, I need HDTV and a ?? DVD player and hook them up with HDMI? Thanks.

[Tack]

I see many people upscaling video when they rip DVDs, insisting that the quality is better that way. The only reason this is true is that they're using high quality software scaling during the encode, and comparing that to playback of the native resolution being resized on-the-fly by the video card, which often uses questionably low quality methods. The codec (in this case xvid) is immaterial.

If you have the luxury of playing back using a PC (which your coworker's husband has), anything he can do to improve the quality of the encode can be done just as easily (*) on playback with the native resolution. In this case, upscaling your encodes is an absolute waste of disk space.

(*) Some postprocessing is so CPU demanding it can't be done in realtime, but if you're talking about high quality software scaling and most other typical types of postprocessing, it can be done in realtime.

[bmok]

I think I'm getting it. So what's a good high quality scaling software? Thanks.

BTW, I did some research about upscaling DVD player. There are many such DVD players available, most notably, OPPO DV-981HD - DVD player is a favorite because it's only $230 and offers high end capabilities. Couple that with a HDTV, you get pretty good upscaling. I however opt for using a computer to do all my multi-media.

[Tack]

I think I'm getting it. So what's a good high quality scaling software? Thanks.
I'm probably not much help here. I use MPlayer on Linux, which has a number of good software scalers. I'm sure others will be able to recommend something suitable for Windows (which is the platform you're asking about, I'm assuming).

I however opt for using a computer to do all my multi-media.Ditto.

[deets]

so does a PC do better up scaling because I have noticed the quality of my DVD's through my PC are far better than my regular DVD player and even HD through my cable box (which up scales)

overall I have found the quality of audio and video through the media PC to be fantastic

[Tack]

"PC" or "DVD player" is far too generalized to make any meaningful statements. A PC, using either software scaling or hardware scaling with a good video card and drivers will produce good results. A PC using hardware scaling and a crappy video card will produce crappy results. An DVD player that upscales using a good processor will produce good results, and likewise a cheap DVD player will produce bad results.

In my own experience, I've found software scaling to consistently beat hardware scaling in all video cards and set-top players I've had access to.

[bmok]

so do I have to invest in a good video card for my pc? Right now it has a onboard AGP 8x. Thanks.

[Tack]

Software scaling is independent of the video card, and usually better quality. So the simple answer is no, you should be fine with onboard video. Unless the onboard video has other more serious problems. :)

[foxyshadis]

Jeremy's guide (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=115727) to realtime video processing is one of the best around if you don't really have any idea of what's going on. Most other guides and threads presume that you have a good idea of what you want and how to get there already. Besides software scaling (spline or lanczos are crisper than the more common bilinear and bicubic), it also includes artifact removal and sharpening.

You can do further, much slower processing while encoding, but you usually need a pretty deep familiarity with common problems and good solutions for them, and it takes a lot of research and tinkering to build that up.

[bmok]

MPlayer Windows exe can be downloaded here http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects#mplayer