Recommended Resolutions for KDVD?

vmesquita · #1 09-02-2003, 10:43 AM

Depending on the source, you can get a different balance between Quality/Resolution/Size. Below are my recommendations for each kind of footage and the amount of time 1 can get in one DVD-R. I would like to discuss this to see what everybody is using and improve this. Please note that this is for NTSC, I don't deal with PAL stuff.

DVD/DivX movies: 704x480 or 720x480. Around 6 hours of 16:9 movies encoded at 4:3 with 224 kbps audio in one DVD-R. You can also use the 544/528x480 resolution for extra footage, but keep in mind that you´ll be doing non-standard-DVDs.

VHS: 352x480. No need for higher resolutions, since VHS has poor horizontal resolution. I use IVTC for telecined content and for trully interlaced content, I don't deinterlace. After good filtering, I am able to put 4 hours of full screen interlaced video in one DVD-R. Some extra recommendation: capture at 704x480, filter (I recommend the dust series for the job) and resize to 352x480.

Musicals/Videos: 352x480. I use lanczosresize to get extra sharpening. Be aware that some videos are telecined and you can use IVTC.

Old cartoons: 352x240. Never tried to fill 1 DVD-R with cartoons, but it seems that one would be able to put 18 hours(!) of cartoons in one DVD-R at 352x240.

DV

?????

Sports

??????

Some extra info: I tried movies at 352x480 but they look blurry, like VHS (but stable picture)

Post your comments so we can improve this list with other sources.

[]'s
Vmesquita

Dialhot · #2 09-02-2003, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vmesquita

DVD/DivX movies: 704x480 or 720x480.

Okay for DVD but if you have a Divx smaller than this you enlarge it ? This is crazy !

Quote:

VHS: 352x480. No need for higher resolutions, since VHS has poor horizontal resolution.

For this you can stay at VCD res (352*240).

vmesquita · #3 09-02-2003, 11:10 AM

DialHot,

Unfortunatelly, there's no mid-term in DVD standard between 704 and 352. Most DivX are 640xXXX or 608xYYY and shrinking then to 352x480 make them look VHS-Like, plus the mosquitos become very very visible. test and you will see, I tested this a lot since my initial idea was to use 352x480 to DivX sources. I even tried 352x480 with sharpening, lanczos, but still... Lots of mosquitos and unsharp picture. If there was 528x480 or 544x480 in the DVD standard, I would definatelly use it.

VHS has both fields of information and if you do 352x240, you loose half of the temporal information. There's an old myth saying VHS is 352x240, which is not true. If you capture and try both resolutions, you'll see that 352x240 looks very unsharp comparing to the original tape. When dealing with trully interlaced stuff, discarding one field is the worst thing you can do. There's a very good doom9 thread about this, I'll post it if I can find it.

[]'s
Vmesquita

Dialhot · #4 09-02-2003, 11:22 AM

I understand only now that you were talking about KDVD.
I apologize

For the VHS, I agree that you see the diff between 240 and 480, but personnaly I rather a VCD at CQ70 than a 1/2DVD at CQ60. Between these two choices, my option goes always to the higher CQ upon the higher res.

vmesquita · #5 09-02-2003, 11:27 AM

I changed the topic to "Recommended Resolutions for KDVD" to avoid confusion.

[]'s
Vmesquita

Sukasem · #6 09-03-2003, 11:14 PM

Hi vmesquita,

Have you tried to encode at 5XXx480 and then patch header to DVD resolution, 7XXx480?

Sukasem

kwag · #7 09-03-2003, 11:18 PM

I have, and it works for me

-kwag

vmesquita · #8 09-04-2003, 10:46 AM

@Sukasem,

I never tried because I think it is not worth it. Doing non-standard stuff is definatelly worth it in KVCDs case, because VCD resolution is ridiculous (352x240

), CBR is a horrible waste of space and so on. So pushing non-standard MPEG1 to limit KVCDs were able to go from 80 min at 352x240 (with bad quality, I must say) to 120 min at 528x480 at great quality.

But doing this with DVDs will only enable (maybe) to put about 20% more footage, at the cost of loosing compatibility with many stand-alones. So in this case I think it's not worth it. In my oppinion, DVD Standard is already very flexible, the only missing thing is really 528/544 resolution. It's like saving 20 cents in each 1 buck disc, but loosing universal compatibility. I would pay extra 20 cents for universal compatibility!

But of course, each one know what to do with his discs...

I'll edit the post to add this as a option for movies...

@Dialhot
This depends a lot of your footage. If you try those shaky, panning home movies, they will look awful (at least for me) in 352x240. Try comparing your 352x240 with the original VHS to spot the difference, the first time I did a 352x240 from VHS I also thought it looked good...

[]'s
Vmesquita

Dialhot · #9 09-04-2003, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vmesquita

the first time I did a 352x240 from VHS I also thought it looked good...

Lol... I love that sentence.
It remember me the last time I watched my laserdics, last month, after 2 years of DVD. Five years ago, I used to find them beautiful also

kwag · #10 09-04-2003, 01:43 PM

I'm using 704x480 instead of 720x480 for my KDVDs. It saves some space, and it's also a DVD compliant resolution.

@vmesquita,
Hey, about your 352x240 comments, if that resolution had been good, KVCD.Net wouldn't have existed

I got fed up with the quality, and I decided to push the limits

I just could not get satisfying quality with the "Standards"

-kwag

nicksteel · #11 09-04-2003, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwag

I'm using 704x480 instead of 720x480 for my KDVDs. It saves some space, and it's also a DVD compliant resolution.

@vmesquita,
Hey, about your 352x240 comments, if that resolution had been good, KVCD.Net wouldn't have existed

I got fed up with the quality, and I decided to push the limits

I just could not get satisfying quality with the "Standards"

-kwag

Read your post about using clip to find size to enter into moviestacker, but do I need to do any setting change in tmpgenc video arrange method before running script? I'll be using KDVD full.

kwag · #12 09-04-2003, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nicksteel

Read your post about using clip to find size to enter into moviestacker, but do I need to do any setting change in tmpgenc video arrange method before running script? I'll be using KDVD full.

Hi nicksteel,

Use the input aspect settings as usual, with MovieStacker. And then set the output resolution (also in Moviestacker) to XVCD (704x480). Take the KDVD Full D-1, and change the output resolution to 704x480. It saves some bitrate, and to me I can't tell the difference from 720x480, even on my HDTV.

-kwag

incredible · #13 09-04-2003, 04:50 PM

If you just want to reencode an existing anamorphic 720x576 Stream for example also to an anamorphic! (not letterboxed) KDVD in such a case my recommendation is not to resize to 704x576 cause this will give you resize/interpolation quality loss. Just leave it as it is at 720x576 and add to your generated AVS Script by Moviestacker or the MA Script

Letterbox(16,16,16,16)

Just to perform an overlap overscan, with this you get the same advantage of a bit less information to encode as told by Kwag (even better as 704x480) and beside you do not resize including quality loss and encoding is a bit faster

.

Are the 16,16,16,16 values when overlapping an NTSC movie still correct?
I use them always when encoding a PAL stream.