Simple: Source resolution for 4:3

[lossf]

Hi. I know my answer has got to be up on the boards here somewhere, but I am having bugger all luck finding it. And, yes, I've read the appropriate guides; I'm not sure that I'm getting it either.

A friend of mine is organizing a compilation project for experimental video artists, and I am helping him out. What we essentially need to know is what resolution we should be asking from the video artists (who are already lined up). I will be doing the MPEG encoding on this end; the artists are going to provide me with AVIs done up to a specific spec.

After reading the guides, I'd come to the conclusion that we needed 640x480 for the source AVIs. Now we've looked it over and we're not so sure that we shouldn't request 720x480 AVIs instead. Naturally, we are going for fullscreen and want the highest-quality, least-compromising scenario for the video.

So-- which is really the best choice here?

Big, big TIA.

[FOO]

You may not have a choice. DV cameras output 720 x 480
but if that's still 4:3 you are OK. It's even better than 640
because no resize is needed.