Video Capture Resolution Question

[riven2000]

I'm still quite the noob on all things video - can someone tell me, if you have a standard def iTunes movie download, and a Blu-ray of the same movie, and you import the Blu-ray onto your Mac at the same resolution as the iTunes file, will the video from the Blu-ray look any better than from iTunes at the same size? Just curious.

[Cornucopia]

Lots of factors can go into the outcome, so there's no general way to tell without further detail. Resolution is not the only determiner of quality: ther's also bitrate, codec choice & settings, # of conversion generations, and any pre-processing/Noise-reduction applied.

For example: if both the Blu-ray and the iTunes clips were encoded optimally from the original HiRez Hollywood master, by a professional compressionist, then to take a Blu-ray and make a 2nd generation copy would very likely NOT look as good as the 1st generation iTunes clip (assuming same rez, framerates, bitrates, codec...), because there will be additional DCT blocking artifacts built up in the re-encode.

So, IT DEPENDS.

Scott

[jagabo]

But in general, online streaming sites don't start with the original hi-res sources, use low bitrates and crappy encoders. So you can most likely get better results yourself from a Blu-ray rip.

[riven2000]

That's what I was hoping for. I have a 1280x720 Blu-ray clip that I resampled to 720x480 and compared to the iTunes file, and it's not quite as sharp as before, but the color is very rich and there is more detail. Thanks for your comments!