Horrible result in resizing down!

[Atlantis]

I’m having major problems in VD 149 in resizing down a video. To this day, all my resizes were to a bigger resolution. I used Bicubic and was happy.

Recently I tried a resizing to a lower resolution and all the problems start. I have a 720 x 480 1.85:1 anamorphic video in Divx 5.0.2 and want to make a VCD file of it. I used the resolution 352 x 174, bicubic in virtual dub to achieve a letter boxed image, I will later put it in TMPGEnc in the center of 352 x 240.

The problem is that VD gives horrible results for me, I tried other methods also and get always heavy stepping on the lines and curves. A Picture is attached. What should I do to get a smooth resize?

[theReal]

Usually, bicubic resizing gives the best results, but you can also try Precise Bilinear (this filter is good for better compression anyways, so maybe VCD will benefit).

You can also try avisynth bicubicresize(x,y,0,0.5) ("neutral") or(x,y,0.333,0.333) ("soft"), but this filter is almost (or exactly?) the same as the VDub bicubic resize filter.

[WarpEnterprises]

Maybe its helpful you attach the original screenshot as well. It seems so bad to me that I think it could be something else than a resizing problem.

[DaveQB]

i am having the exact same issue.

i am kinda to all this.

i have found (i think from something that i read) that reducting the resolution improves the quality. this is true in that it reduces the compression artifacts, especially in high motion scene's.

but with dropping the compression artifacts you pick up jagged lines like the picture above.

so its like a trade-off where you end up getting now where.

if we can reduce these jagged edges then reducing resolution would return best results, but right now its 6 one way and half a dozen the other.

i found leaving the width, say, as default res and only playing with the height to get the aspect right, that it splits it in the middle; less artifacts then default, but no as little as lower res (ver, hor).
slightly more jagged edges then the intial film, but less then the lower res (ver, hor)

any ideas of a filter maybe to reduce this ??