Nero Recode/Nero Digital users...

[siratfus]

In the Video tab where you have the option to Deinterlace, Crop and Resize. I've been leaving these options as default as "recommended" by nero. But I'm realizing that none of them ever resize to 720 x 480, it's always smaller, thus bigger black bars when I'm viewing it.

1. Is it wise to customize it to 720 x 480 ??
2. There is also a box that you can check for LETTERBOXING (Square pixel) Automatically, they check this. Once again, I think it creates bigger black bars. Should I uncheck it?

My instincts are to customize every video size to 720 x 480 and leaving the Letterboxing uncheck.

Would my video come out crappy if I do this?

[j4gg3rr]

Just make a small test video source file that encodes in 30 secs or trim a full length source using Nero's Edit range settings and play with the settings. You'll test everything within half an hour!

Better to find out hands on than waiting for a spoon fed answer by people not knowing your source and destination requirements.

[guns1inger]

What is your source ?

If your source isn't exactly 4:3 or 16:9 then you will get black bars on playback. If you didn't, you would get distorted images.

[siratfus]

Source is my movie collection raw files ripped onto hard drive. Dvds are 720 x 480. I'm doing "Main Movie" to Nero Digital. Nero Recode always resizes it to 720 x 400 or less under the automatic dial and they always click the "leterboxing" (square pixel) option. Since the program automatically does this, I guess this is what they reccomend. I'm just wondering, WHY?

1.) Why do they reduce the original ratio?
2.) Why do the check the letterboxing?

However, there is a dial for you to click to Customize your own and to uncheck the letterboxing also.

3.) So I'm wondering should I resize everything to 720 x 480 and uncheck the letterboxing?
4.) Wouldn't this show up better on a big screen?
5.) If I do this, should I throw more megabytes at it?

Which leads me to this question.... I've been very happy with backing up my movies to regular dvd-r using Nero Recode mpeg2 encoding. When a movie is compressed to even as low as 65%, I'm still very happy with the quality. So I've been trying to figure out the ratio between mpeg2 vs mpeg4. What would you guys say is the megabyte ratio that would yied equal quality? My assumption is 2 to 1.

6.) For every mpeg4 megabyte, how many megabytes is that to mpeg2?

I hope someone understands what the heck I'm talking about. I'm a novice at this, so I don't know how to put my thoughts into words with the correct lingo.

Example:

Source- ripped movie files

Mpeg2 compressed to dvd-r yields 4000 MB file.

If compressing to Mpeg4 from the same source, would 2000 MB yield equal quality?

[guns1inger]

NTSC DVD are 720 x 480, but they do not have square pixels. The pixel aspect ratio is accounted for on playback. AVI files have square pixels, so things have to change to compensate. For example, a 4:3 NTSC DVD has a resolution of 720 x 480 non-square pixels. The same file, as an AVI files with 1:1 PAR, with have a resolution of 640 x 480. Widescreen, on the other hand, with have a 1:1 PAR of 854 x 480. As most standalone players prefer widths under 720 pixels, 640 is often used as a basic, and the vertical is adjusted accordingly. So you get something close to 640 x 360.

Now there is nothing to stop you encoding at 720 x 480. It is legal to do so. Some formats of avi even support aspect ratio flags so you can tell the playback software that it is 1:1 or 4:3 or 16:9. However most players ignore this in all but MPEG-2 or DVD VOB files (and some ignore even these - *cough* WMP *cough*)

As to bitrate ratios - there is no hard and fast rule. I believe that you need around 2000 kbps for a 640 x nnn mpeg-4 file to hold the same quality and stability as it's mpeg-2 source. However you can take this out of the equation by using Constant Quality encoding. The encoder will use the bitrate required to achieve a quality level set by you. You can't predict the file size, but if quality is the key factor then size isn't an issue.