Does image size matter for encoding?

[markvints]

Hi,
I'm using a Studio PCTV card to capture some camcorder images, and achieve pretty good results with a 384x288 frame size (UYVY format uncompressed). However the PAL standard VCD size is 352x288. Do I really need to crop my source image, or doesn't this matter much?

Alternatively, I was playing around with encoding my 384x288 image as an MPEG-2 SVCD but with the 384x288 resolution. On a setting of constant quality = 100, I get a slightly better image than in MPEG-1 format. But 384x288 is a lot less than the SVCD size of 576x432.

Windows Media Player seems not to worry about the different image formats I throw at it, so should I?

[Ricardo]

It only really matters if you plan to view them on a DVD/VCD player.

[ktnwin]

Givem what you have, it maybe better to capture at 352x288 before making VCD. This avoid the resize operation during converting (faster).
To make SVCD (MPEG-2) which double the size of the MPEG file, you need to capture at least at 480x576 (PAL) to get good result. Anything less than that will be converted to 480x576 which will show some pixelation due to the enlargement.