I've just started delving into the whole XVCD world and am very happy with the results I've gotten so far -- my DVD player can only take bitrates up to 2500 but they look SO much better than the VCDs I made before! My main video source is DivX files of TV episodes that I've downloaded. Video quality can vary, from very nice DVD rips to ok quality TV caps.

Lately I've been making XVCDs from DVD rips of Farscape episodes, which always have strange resolutions like 512x384 or 480x360. I'm always confused what resolution to be encoding them in. The source is also 25fps, so I found loading the PAL template and encoding at 352x288 makes great encodes.

Here's my question: if I were to increase my resolution, would I get a better video output? And what resolutions can I use? According to the AVI --> XVCD guide on this site, I can try 720x576. But I read increasing the resolution without increasing the bitrate will result in a blocky image during high action scenes.

Looking forward to your input!