The unmitigated ruler of downsizing algorithms?

[The.Yield]

Hello class. Long story short, I <3 taking high quality videos and smashing them down to small portable players at as high a quality as possible. Bit of a hobby, really (PSP, Cowon A2, Etc).

For the longest time I've been using Lancoz thinking it was the best, hands down.

But recently a little birdy told me to try out SincR... And wow, I'm really getting some sharp results with minimal "weirdness" -- as I call it (horizontal tonal crunch on large planes of solid color, etc etc).

So does anyone else know of some deep, dark secret algorithms that work great for this particular degree of downsizing? What do you think is best (Right now SincR is on the top of my list)?

[redwudz]

If I remember correctly, Lancoz is better for upsizing and BiCubic or Precise Bicubic for downsizing. But one of our other members with more knowledge may have better info.

[dphirschler]

I always liked Bilinear. But I recognize that I am in the minority. It seems everyone else loves some form of Bicubic. I don't understand it, but it is their opinion just as Bilinear is mine. Maybe I am just old school.


Darryl

[Midzuki]

1) Bicubic for upsizing, Bilinear or Lanczos4 for downsizing;

2) Could you please forgive my ignorance or stupidness and
explain to me what the heck do you mean by SincR?

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[sanlyn]

I think I recall SincR being a resize option found in mplayer (a media player for Linux. Not a very good player, as I also recall (IMHO, of course. Your mileage may vary), and I haven't been tempted to use it for some years). But this goes back a bit. Anyway, it's not a product, it's a resizing algorithm, as is Bicubic, Lancoz, etc. Don't kinow that I've ever seen a piece of software that uses it. But I've seen a vast number of resize method tests all over the Web for years, including sites devoted to both video and still image software (a la Photoshop). Those tests almost always recommend Bicubic for downsizing. But upsizing seems to bring on many, many differences of opinion. Best advice I've seen so far for resizing, up or down: test your video with multiple options and choose the one that works best for that particular video. One size does NOT fit all.

Anyone ever heard of a SincR plugin for VirtualDub ? ? ? I think I saw it as a resize option in, uh....was it some of Adobe's stuff? I'd hate to think we'd have to spend $600-plus for this option.

[The.Yield]

You can use SincR within a wonderful piece of software called MediaCoder. Which is what I've been using for some time now. Constantly updated and very feature rich.