Resolution versus Bitrate

[buch75]

I've read the guides here and downloaded some movies off Kazaa and iMesh and burned them onto CD. I've noticed that most of them play on my TV in a small box in the middle of the screen. I have tried changing them to full screen using TMPGEnc but then they look blocky or fuzzy. I've noticed that when I search for movies on the Internet, they have various resolutions and bitrate. I see some that have high resolution (740xsomething) but low bitrates, and others that have low resolution (352x288) and high bitrate. How do resolution and bitrate relate to each other. Will I have better luck taking a 352x288 video with a high bitrate and making it full screen? Also, how does fps fit into the picture?

Thanks,
Ed

[stanwebber]

higher resolution translates into higher picture detail(assuming the detail is there to begin with). this extra detail requires more bitrate(filesize) to faithfully reproduce the image. if the bitrate allocated falls short you will get compression artifacts the same as you would in a .jpg image. motion is a significant factor in this respect as fast-moving scenes do not compress as well as non-moving ones. the ratio of resolution/bitrate/filesize is a tradeoff in any combination. what is appropriate is down to the properties of your source & personal preference/criteria

[dmonty]

A quick overview:

Resolution - In regards to video, resolution merely determines image size. For example a resolution of 720x480 is horizontally and vertically larger than 352x288.

Bitrate - In regards to video, bitrate is the average number of bits that one second of video data will consume. The higher the bitrate the more faithful your reproduction will be to the original source.

FPS - The frame rate is measured by frames per second (FPS) during recording. The more frames the better for capturing video content with motion.

Now to your questions...

How do resolution and bitrate relate to each other.

Bitrate = Quality / Resolution = Screen Size. The larger the resolution the higher the bitrate needs to be to sustain video quality. The only reason for reducing bitrate and resolution is to reduce the file size of the movie.

Will I have better luck taking a 352x288 video with a high bitrate and making it full screen?

Hard to say. It may depend on how high the bitrate is set. But I suspect that doubling the size to 704x576 (PAL) would probably create pixilation.

how does fps fit into the picture

Film is traditionally 24 fps and NTSC video is 29.97 fps PAL is 25 fps. To further reduce the movies file size fps will sometimes be reduced.

D