Resolution of movie vs. NTSC TV??

[Violater]

OK, I use TMPGEnc to encode my movies, I have Panasonic DVD player and a standard 27" NTSC TV. My goal for all movies is to fill as much screen as possible while maintaining aspect ratio. So in TMPGEnc I select 4:3 NTSC for the output and whatever the source is for the source. The problem I have though is that I don't know what the effect changing the resolution is since I don't know how to preview the output. Yes, there is a preview option, but since I don't know the resolution of my TV how can I know what it will look like?

[FulciLives]

OK, I use TMPGEnc to encode my movies, I have Panasonic DVD player and a standard 27" NTSC TV. My goal for all movies is to fill as much screen as possible while maintaining aspect ratio. So in TMPGEnc I select 4:3 NTSC for the output and whatever the source is for the source. The problem I have though is that I don't know what the effect changing the resolution is since I don't know how to preview the output. Yes, there is a preview option, but since I don't know the resolution of my TV how can I know what it will look like?

TMPGEnc will either make your output 720x480 or 352x480

Either one will look about the same on a 27" TV although 720x480 will look slightly sharper and should be used unless you need to go much over say 2 hours of recording time then dropping down to 352x480 looks better because the lack of resolution allows you to use a lower bitrate and fit more on a DVD yet on a 27" TV 352x480 will look nearly as good as 720x480

For instance 720x480 at 8000kbps will look better than 352x480 at 8000kbps but 720x480 at say 3000kbps will look worse than 352x480 at 3000kbps

If you are using the WIZARD MODE in TMPGEnc it will set the resolution to 720x480 as long as your bitrate is above 4000kbps but if you set your bitrate lower than 4000kbps then it sets itself to 352x480 automatically although you can overide these auto settings.

You should set your output to 4:3 unless your input is 16x9

Even if your input is 4:3 but has an aspect ratio of 16x9 or greater (such as 2.35:1 for instance) then you actually can make it 16x9 by cutting 60 pixels off the top and 60 pixels off the bottom (using the CRIP/CROP feature in TMPGEnc) and selecting 16x9 as your output.

Anyways this LINK might help you some:

Configuring TMPGEnc for high-quality, DVD-compliant MPEG-2

Good Luck

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[lordsmurf]

720x480 will only look sharper if the source was greater than 352x480.