Need your Opinion for this: 2 or 1 Movie per DVD ?

[ShinKyo]

I have alot of Movies encoded with XviD and I wanna convert and burn them on DVD.
Here are the approx. specs of the Movies:

Res.: 576-640 x 272-320 (Res of each movie is somwhere in this range)

XviD Video Quality: 760-860 Kbps

Now I have two options:

1: Encode the movies in CVD Res.( 352x480/576 ) with an average bitrate of 2800-3000. That way I can fit 2 movies on a DVDR

2: Encode the movies in DVD Res.( 720x480/576 ) with an average bitrate of 5000. That way I can fit 1 movie on a DVDR.

So which option would be the better one given the source of the video???

[ntscuser]

Many stand-alone players won't accept any resolution other than 720(704)x480(576). I've had some success with TMPGEnc's 352x240(288) setting but that may have been sheer luck.

[ShinKyo]

CVD Res. is a standard Resolution for DVDs and all my DVD players and the ones from my friends , aunts ... are accepting this resolution.
So back to the topic: I need your Opinions about my prob

[lordsmurf]

Many stand-alone players won't accept any resolution other than 720(704)x480(576). I've had some success with TMPGEnc's 352x240(288) setting but that may have been sheer luck.

Not true.

Compliant DVD resolutions:

NTSC
720x480
704x480
352x480
352x240

PAL
720x576
704x576
352x576
352x288

And then the MPEG chips inside often even support other resolutions used in DVB, like 480x480, 640x480, 412x480, 544x480 ... but that is DVB .. "B", yes, not a typo ..... and NOT compliant DVD resolution.

[ShinKyo]

Come on guys plz give opinions about my question in the first post: don#t use this thread to discuss about DVD Resolutions

[gadgetguy]

In general, if you increase the framesize, the quality will be worse, but might be acceptable if the increase is not too large. So my advice would be to go to the closest lower DVD compliant framesize.

[lordsmurf]

Come on guys plz give opinions about my question in the first post: don#t use this thread to discuss about DVD Resolutions

Sidetracked.

1: Encode the movies in CVD Res.( 352x480/576 ) with an average bitrate of 2800-3000. That way I can fit 2 movies on a DVDR

Your source isn't super anyway. Do this one.
Should make a fine looking DVD.

[junkmalle]

Res.: 576-640 x 272-320 (Res of each movie is somwhere in this range)

Now I have two options:

1: Encode the movies in CVD Res.( 352x480/576 ) with an average bitrate of 2800-3000. That way I can fit 2 movies on a DVDR

2: Encode the movies in DVD Res.( 720x480/576 ) with an average bitrate of 5000. That way I can fit 1 movie on a DVDR.

So which option would be the better one given the source of the video???

If you're going anamorphic burn 720x480, one per DVD. If non-anamorphic (you're going to include the black bars as part o f the picture) you might get away with 720x480, 2 per DVD. The black bars will compress very well.

[ShinKyo]

@junkmalle
I'm going to include the black bars as part o f the picture. But liek some previous post said, wouldnt it be better to keep the smaller Res. ?

[junkmalle]

I'm going to include the black bars as part o f the picture. But liek some previous post said, wouldnt it be better to keep the smaller Res. ?

With wide black bars top and bottom you will be able to reduce the bitrate of a 720x480 frame to ~3000 without much picture degredation (especially if your sources are 23.976 fps). In most cases that will look better than cutting your resolution nearly in half to 352x480 (unless your sources are blurry to start with).

In any case, for best results, use a good resizing filter like VirtualDub's Lanczos3 or AVISynth's LanczosResize. Both of these are visibly better than TMPGEnc's resizer (which appear to be Bilinear) for example.

Just do the experiments for yourself and see. In the end, only you can decide what's acceptable to you.

[DRP]

I have alot of Movies encoded with XviD and I wanna convert and burn them on DVD.
Here are the approx. specs of the Movies:

Res.: 576-640 x 272-320 (Res of each movie is somwhere in this range)

XviD Video Quality: 760-860 Kbps

Now I have two options:

1: Encode the movies in CVD Res.( 352x480/576 ) with an average bitrate of 2800-3000. That way I can fit 2 movies on a DVDR

This is your answer. At CVD resolution you could even go one further and reduce the bitrate to something more like VBR ~2000 and fit 3 movies/disc and you won't even see the difference.

My DVD player accepts SVCD resolution on DVD without a drama, so I routinely create DVD-SVCD discs with 2 movies on at bitrates between 2500 & 3000 and CVD resolution DVDs at bitrates between 2000 & 2500 with 3 movies on all from downloaded DivX/XviDs.

At the source XviD resolutions you're talking about, SVCD resolution is the perfect compromise as it's the closest to the source and therefore requires the least resizing and hence quality loss but it will require a standalone player that doesn't baulk at SVCD resolution on DVD. If it's a newish player that shouldn't be a problem though. SVCD resolution normally requires a bitrate of 2500 (on CD), so anything higher than this is more than good enough for the best possible quality. Anything higher than 4000kbps on DivX/XviD source is just a waste. There will be no visible improvement at all.

[jimmalenko]

IMO 720 x 480 is not all that far away from your original frame sizes, and I think that "upsizing" will give you a better result overall than downsizing to 352 x 480. It depends on you though - would you prefer to get two movies to a disc, or would you prefer to retain the most quality possible, or are you somewhere inbetween ?

[junkmalle]

Just for fun:

A frame from a 608x256 900 kbps Xvid AVI file:



Resized with VirtualDubMpeg's Lanczos 3 filter (352x480), frame served to TMPGEnc, encoded as progressive MPEG2, Constant Quality 80 (1864 kbps average):



That 352x480 frame enlarged to 720x480 as your DVD player would:



I used lanczos 3 for this enlargment even though that's probably better (sharper) than the typical DVD player is capable of.

Now the original Xvid enlarged directly to 720x480 instead (2694 kbps average), same Constant Quality 80 setting in TMPGEnc:




The 720x480 conversion is obviously clearer than the 352x480 conversion. You can easily read the word SHERIFF on the back of the truck at 720x480.

What you can't see is how the video looks in motion. Since they were both compressed in Constant Quality mode they are very similar in terms of macroblocks, ringing, etc. The 720x480 conversion wasn't significantly worse than the original Xvid AVI when watched on TV. There was a little more macroblocking in the 720x480 conversion than in either the 352x480 conversion or the original Xvid. It wasn't really noticable except when viewing enlarged still frames. Neither video would improve very much by using a higher bitrate.

So yes, you could probably fit three or four 90 minute movies on one DVD using a 352x480 frame size. At the cost of a little loss of clarity.