Should I stay with 704x480 or resize to 640x480?

[lv2race]

30-years ago I attended the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal and took some great video with my full size VHS camcorder. I've started slowly uploading the video to YouTube and have gotten a great response. One of my videos has over 22K views. I spend a lot of time on this forum and others reading and trying to learn the best way to digitally convert my tapes.

My setup is plying the tapes from a Panasonic AG-1980 VCR with an S-cable, running through a datavideo TC-1000, and capturing with an AIW9600. I capture with VirtualDub uncompressed but have learned there is no benefit to that, in fact my hard drive probably struggles, so in the future I will capture with HuffYUV lossless.

I capture at 720x480 and then I edit with AviSynth. My last video I cropped (10,0,-10,-10) and then Add Borders (2,4,2,6) resulting in a frame size of 704 x 480. My understanding is this was the viewable frame size when watching on a TV (I may have said that incorrectly?). I've seen the formulas where DAR = PAR * FAR. My understanding is that the PAR for my video is 10:11.

I encode using HandBrake and under the Dimensions tab it says "Source: 704 x 480, PAR 1/1). I've tried Avidemux but get better results with HB and Hybrid keeps crashing on me).

My questions:

1. Is encoding at 704 x 480 optimal?
2. Should I resize to 640 x 480 and then encode?

Thanks

[jagabo]

It depends on the player/TV. The built in player in many TVs (and other devices) don't respond to AR flags -- assuming all videos are square pixel. So it's safer to resize yourself. (Though even that can be a problem if the TV insists on displaying all videos full screen, stretching 4:3 videos to 16:9). You generally want to avoid resizing as each resize is an opportunity to introduce artifacts. But with VHS the horizontal resolution is so low a horizontal downscale won't be a problem. If you had a higher quality source (a good DVD, for example) downscaling would hurt the picture more.

[poisondeathray]

30-years ago I attended the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal and took some great video with my full size VHS camcorder. I've started slowly uploading the video to YouTube and have gotten a great response.

If it's for youtube I would consider double rate deinterlacing to 59.94p and upscaling to >720 height. 720 height is the lowest resolution that has 59.94p enabled on YT. Otherwise YT discards 1/2 the frames to 29.97p, motion will be more choppy. Motorsports looks better at 59.94p

[Cornucopia]

"Optimal" is what you are hoping for, so you do the least amount of modification and do the least amount of guessing.
Resizing is done with interpolation which is guessing.
If your playback apps can support non-square pixels and Aspect Ratio signalling/flags, then you can avoid the guessing by leaving it the same size.
If your apps/devices cannot support that, then it is best to resize & encode to a standard square pixel format, 640x480 is probably the best choice.
Similar inferences can be made regarding other processes - like framerate, color sampling...



Scott

[lv2race]

30-years ago I attended the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal and took some great video with my full size VHS camcorder. I've started slowly uploading the video to YouTube and have gotten a great response.

If it's for youtube I would consider double rate deinterlacing to 59.94p and upscaling to >720 height. 720 height is the lowest resolution that has 59.94p enabled on YT. Otherwise YT discards 1/2 the frames to 29.97p, motion will be more choppy. Motorsports looks better at 59.94p

Thank you all for the quick replies. Poisondeathray - actually I have been deinterlacing at 59.94p with QTGMC but I didn't want to bring that up because it seems like there are a lot of strong feelings about deinterlacing. I agree, motorsports look a lot better at 59.94 which is exactly why I've been doing it. Previous to this last video I've been cropping the overscan, not adding back any borders, and resizing to 720 x 480. The videos have looked good, but I'm always looking for a better way. I didn't realize how YouTube handles height and framerate, so thank you for that.

[manono]

1. Is encoding at 704 x 480 optimal?
2. Should I resize to 640 x 480 and then encode?

1. Not for YouTube, it's not. I'm assuming you're uploading MKVs or MP4s. You'll wind up with fat people as YouTube won't resize them.
2. Yes, without a doubt, if for YouTube. Or upscaled to 720p 59.94 as pdr suggests.

[lv2race]

Thanks again for all the advice, it gave me a lot to think about.

I ran a few tests over the last 24-hours:

- I confirmed that sure enough, all of my 480P59.94 videos I've uploaded to YouTube are displayed as 480P29.97
- I created a video at 480P29.97 and it looked choppy to me, so I didn't upload even as a test
- I uploaded a video resized to 640 x 480P59.94 to YouTube and it looked good other than than the slower frame rate when downgraded by YT
- I uploaded a video by cropping (10, 0, -10, 10), then adding borders (186, 6, 186, 4) giving a frame size of 1072 x 480. Trying to keep the frame size close to the original capture frame ratio and keeping it at mod16. I then did a BiCubicResize to 1280 x 720 and uploaded the MP4 720P59.94 to YouTube. Surprisingly the video looked quite good on YouTube and it actually displayed at 60fps! I took a screen shot of the 640x480 upload and compared it with the 1280x720 upload and even though the 480 is a little crisper the 720 played better on my iPhone. The aspect ratios of the videos are identical as near as I can tell.

I've spent the last month on a 2-minute video, editing, testing, trying new things. I frequently do Google searches on ["xxx", VideoHelpForum, Jagabo] and others from this thread. There are a lot of opinions but few that I trust. Anyways, thank you all gain.

[manono]

I then did a BiCubicResize to 1280 x 720 and uploaded the MP4 720P59.94 to YouTube.

If I'm reading you correctly, you purposely uploaded a video with black bars on the sides. I believe what pdr had in mind when he suggested upscaling to 720p59.94 was a resize to 960x720. No more black bars. AviSynth's best upscaler is nnedi3_rpow2.

[abolibibelot]

Not for YouTube, it's not. I'm assuming you're uploading MKVs or MP4s. You'll wind up with fat people as YouTube won't resize them.

For the record, it used to be on YouTube that the uploader had the possibility to set a specific aspect ratio by adding the relevant code among the tags, but from what I've been replied on this forum, this feature has been disabled some years ago, for whatever stupid reason.

@lv2race
If you have dedicated followers who would like to watch this footage in pristine quality, you could use YouTube to showcase them, without bothering too much about how they look there, and then share the "masters" through BitTorrent or some file sharing website (since those are your own personal recordings there should be no copyright infringement issues).

[lv2race]

I then did a BiCubicResize to 1280 x 720 and uploaded the MP4 720P59.94 to YouTube.

If I'm reading you correctly, you purposely uploaded a video with black bars on the sides. I believe what pdr had in mind when he suggested upscaling to 720p59.94 was a resize to 960x720. No more black bars. AviSynth's best upscaler is nnedi3_rpow2.

Well, that certainly makes things easy! I think I understand now how you get 960 although I wish I thought of that myself. If 640 x 480 DR has a 1.3333 ratio, then a display height of 720 should have a width of 720 * 1.333 or 960. I also created an excel file that calculates the width correctly given a certain height assuming a PAR of 10:11.

Thanks for the tip on nnedi3_rpow2. I'm going to have to read up on how to use it.

Your post was very helpful, thank you.

[lv2race]

Not for YouTube, it's not. I'm assuming you're uploading MKVs or MP4s. You'll wind up with fat people as YouTube won't resize them.

For the record, it used to be on YouTube that the uploader had the possibility to set a specific aspect ratio by adding the relevant code among the tags, but from what I've been replied on this forum, this feature has been disabled some years ago, for whatever stupid reason.

@lv2race
If you have dedicated followers who would like to watch this footage in pristine quality, you could use YouTube to showcase them, without bothering too much about how they look there, and then share the "masters" through BitTorrent or some file sharing website (since those are your own personal recordings there should be no copyright infringement issues).

Thanks for the message. I originally started posting to an invite only racing torrent site with mixed results. I find the engagement on YouTube better, i.e. a lot more feedback, and comments. One of the videos I uploaded to the torrent site I later stumbled across on YouTube with thousands of views so that's when I decided to start uploading to YouTube.

[Selur]

Hybrid keeps crashing on me

If you want help, post a debug output to the Hybrid thread with details on what you are doing. (ideally with a sample)

[manono]

I'm going to have to read up on how to use it.

Download nnedi3 and one way is:

nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=2,cshift="Spline36resize",fwidth=960,fheight=720)

Use whatever resizer you like. For compression's sake, for YouTube I usually use Bilinear.

...so that's when I decided to start uploading to YouTube.

Hehe, plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. It won't stop just because the source video is now on YouTube. There are thousands of videos on other channels that began life on mine. And YouTube does nothing about it. They allow/sanction/approve of plagiarism. But I can't claim copyright violations as my videos are public domain. Maybe you can. YouTube does take that seriously.

[lv2race]

Hybrid keeps crashing on me

If you want help, post a debug output to the Hybrid thread with details on what you are doing. (ideally with a sample)

Thanks - when I have some time I will post the problem I have been having

[lv2race]

I'm going to have to read up on how to use it.

Download nnedi3 and one way is:

nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=2,cshift="Spline36resize",fwidth=960,fheight=720)

Use whatever resizer you like. For compression's sake, for YouTube I usually use Bilinear.

...so that's when I decided to start uploading to YouTube.

Hehe, plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. It won't stop just because the source video is now on YouTube. There are thousands of videos on other channels that began life on mine. And YouTube does nothing about it. They allow/sanction/approve of plagiarism. But I can't claim copyright violations as my videos are public domain. Maybe you can. YouTube does take that seriously.

Thanks for the tip on nneedi3_rpow2, I'll have to play around with it.

I wholeheartedly agree, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The person who posted my video was courteous enough to say it wasn't his video (and I'm anonymous on the torrent site). When I later posted the original on YT, with much better quality, I received a message from one of the team members from one of the Italian F1 teams who said "so YOU are the original creator of the video !". I'm not even sure I can copyright my video as technically Formula 1 had exclusive rights to all video and they even kicked me out of the pits when they saw I had a camera without the approved sticker. Either way, I don't mind people sharing my videos, my wife has seen them on Facebook as well. It would be nice if they gave me credit though.