Changing the size of my Music Video's?

[GroovyGran]

Hi, sorry I'm so thick about these issues, but I have a lot of Music Video's (mpeg & avi)
I don't need to put them on dvd, they are just for playing from my husbands laptop onto a flatscreen Tv. (32")
The problem is, that when the video's are played on our PC, most of them look OK, but when played on the 32" they become blurred!
Is there a program that can alter the size of the music videos to make them clearer? is it the size of the video's?
Most of them are 352x240 but a few are bigger

Can anyone help me with this please
regards Linda

[SatStorm]

Is your husband a VJ by any chance? A Virtual dj fan?

Your videos (352x240) seems to be NTSC VCD. Those won't look good on a PAL 32" flatscreen TV. For a TV screen like this, you need at least PAL CVD to look OK. That's 352x576 framesize, at 25 frames per second (fps).

You can't convert easy and without issues your videos. To make myself a NTSC VCD look "OK" on my 40" LCD screen, I filter it, upscale it and convert it to PAL. That takes about an hour for a typical 3.30min music video. Using my core 2 duo 6600 that is...

A small tip that might help a bit visually: Those videos you have, are obvious 4:3. If your husband set your TV to 4:3 mode, they gonna look better. Of course, that way, your 32" TV screen has an active area of around 25", the rest is vertical black bars on the sides of the screen.

[GroovyGran]

lol, thank you for the quick reply
My husband is a DJ, not sure what a virtal DJ is! but we do a quiz every Sunday afternoon at our local pub, with free drinks for the winners. during theis time, we play some funny and some music videos for them.
He uses his laptop, hence we don't need to put them on dvd.
I have downloaded most of the music videos from DC++
What software would I need to try and get them to look right? I have printed off your reply to show my hubby when he gets back from work
have patience with a poor old wrinkly like me!!!!

Linda

[RobertUSM]

I can't help you too much with the size of your videos, just offer my solution for obtaining videos.

My wife and I are preparing to VJ our 20th and 25th, respectively, high school reunions. We need lots of 80s videos.

She's been getting them off of VH1 Classic. May or may not be available in your area.

She records hours of them on our satellite DVR, then records the ones she needs onto our DVD recorder and then brings them into her laptop where she edits them out and saves them on the computer.

We use ClubDJ Pro to play them on a projection screen.


If this helps you or anyone else, then great!

[SatStorm]

Unfortunately, you can't convert a video of a low resolution to something better. If the picture quality is low, it remains low.

There are ways to make them look good, through filtering and using commercial programs, etc. The easiest way I can imagine is to buy Premiere, the neat video plug in and a PC based on a Intel Core 2 Quad. That means more than 2000 euros... Then you have to learn how to use them, spent 6 months study them and testing, then start converting. For each video you need about a half hour with that system - and the results won't be much better than what you already see now.
More advance solutions, are to learn programs like virtualdub and the filters they have or even anisynth. Let me tell you something: I'm doing those things for 10 years now, and I still don't know the half of them! This is not easy. Neither fast: It needs much time.

IMO, it is far better to spent 300 euros so to buy music video DVD compilations, than try to convert music videos downloaded with DC++ (beyond the fact that it might be illegal to do so...) to something that looked better. Second hand DVD compilations costs very few those days. Downloading videos is a solution only for rare stuff. And if you have to do so, choose DivX/XviD ones or vob ones! There are huge in filesize, need days to download them and the picture quality won't look perfect always. Lots of cheaters on those ones quality wise....

VJ means Video Jokey, as DJ means Disk Jokey. Virtual DJ is a program that allows you to mix music videos same way you can mix mp3s or vinyls with a mixer and 2 decks (like the old days!!!).

[SatStorm]

@RobertUSM: you can't use music videos of a music station like VH1 Classic (a viacom UK channel) to a Pub without paying royalties. It's illegal.

Off topic: VH1 Classic is a good source for the British and the Americans fans of 70s/80s music videos. But you won't see italodisco/eurodisco/Hi-NRG or even newbeat - for example - music videos on VH1 Classic. If you interest for those, you end up searching them on the internet. Have you ever watched a Sandra or Modern Talking music video on VH1 Classic? I bet not! You probably don't even know those artists. But for the Europeans, are more than well known...

[RobertUSM]

That's fine. Was just sharing a method for getting videos in better quality that you can control than downloading them.

[GroovyGran]

Thanks for all th replies, We get vh1 in our area, I'm from the UK.
I have seen some Sandra, Video's on DC, but didn't know what they were?
Can anyone give me any UK sites where I can buy Music Video's from, I have already tried a search, but they all seemed to come up with sites that you can just watch the video's.
I'ts a shame I can't convert the vids, as we have a mixed age group in our local pub, and some of the oldies wanted to see some old rock n roll vids, which I got from You Tube. Eddie Cochran etc. annyway, thanks for all the help
regards Linda

[SatStorm]

GroovyGran, here some good links to start with:

http://amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/203-5991790-4303111?initialSearch=1&url=search-al...0&Go.y=0&Go=Go
http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_ss_w/303-9243807-1577006?__mk_de_DE=%C5M%C5Z%D5%D1&initi...0&Go.y=0&Go=Go
http://dvd-video.search.ebay.co.uk/80s_DVDs_W0QQa10244ZQ2d24QQa15962ZQ2d24QQa15964ZQ2d...ofocusZunknown

Sandra Cretu was the Queen of the 80s in Europe. Never had a hit in UK and USA of course.