Best way to store 26 anime episodes on DVD(s)?

[choirislife923]

Currently, I have a complete season of an anime series at 640x480 XviD 23.976FPS Progressive/128kbps 44.1khz stereo mp3. What will be the best way of converting this to a DVD. Here are the routes I am thinking about:

1) lower the resolution to 352x240, mpeg-1, keep it progressive, and pack the heck out of a few dvds, NTSC film framerate
2) lower the res to 352x480, mpeg-2, interlaced...typical half D1 DVD, 29.97 NTSC
3) up the res to 720x480, mpeg-2, progressive...typical DVD encoded with a progresive flag set, NTSC Film framerate
4) up the res to 720x480, mpeg-2, interlaced, 29.97 NTSC

which way would be ideal? being that its anime, i would think resolution won't be such a big deal compared to say, a live action movie (because animation is just blocks of colors), correct? Also, would a progressive-encoded DVD work fine in a regular DVD player (interlaced)?

[vmesquita287]

Up the res to 704x480, mpeg2 progressive. You can use my tool DIKO for this task (check my signature). If your anime has those very low subs, you might need an special script template (which can be found in DIKO Forum)

Also I am presuming that by anime, you mean those japanese stuff. If you mean cartoons (like tom and Jerry, Simpsons etc) then you can lower the resolution to 352x240 and use MPEG1.

As for the progressive vs interlaced thing, the correct way to deal with this is encode at 23.976 then enable a pulldown flag that instructs the player to convert to 29.97 at real time. That's how movies are encoded.

[guns1inger]

For the best quality, buy a Divx capable player and leave them as they are. The only likely problem will be the subs, which if fan-subbed, may be in the wrong position.

Otherwise, Option 3. Encode at full res, at 23.976 with 2:3 pulldown.

Anime and other cell or mixed cell/CGI actually compresses very badly. Mpeg compression shares a lot of it's basic compression methodology with jpeg image compression. One thing neither of them like are lines/edges/high constrast points. If you over compress animation like this, you will get lots of artifacts around lines are edges, including your subs.

[choirislife923]

Also I am presuming that by anime, you mean those japanese stuff.

yup

The only likely problem will be the subs, which if fan-subbed, may be in the wrong position.

yup...they're set to 0% safe zone...

[guns1inger]

You might be able to find a player that allows incremental zooming out - rare, but apparently they exist.

If you choose to encode for DVD, I would use FitCD and avisynth. FitCD will create a scipt that resizes the video correctly, and adds a border to get the subs back on screen. Load this script instead of the video into your encoder, and you will get your mpeg2 video at the end of the process.