Doubling the size of a WMV video? (320x240 > 640x480)

[kingmustard123]

I have a 320x240 WMV file that was created by Windows Live Movie Maker.

I wish to double the size to 640x480 before I upload it to Facebook.

What is the easiest way to do this?

[guns1inger]

The best solution would be to open the original project in movie maker and create a new output at the resolution you want. If you don't still have the original project then load low resolution video into movie maker and output at the higher resolution. It is going to look like it has been upscaled, so expect it to be softer than the original.

[kingmustard123]

The best solution would be to open the original project in movie maker and create a new output at the resolution you want. If you don't still have the original project then load low resolution video into movie maker and output at the higher resolution. It is going to look like it has been upscaled, so expect it to be softer than the original.

If I am double the video size, should I also double the bit rate (from 932 kbps to 1864 kbps)?

[aedipuss]

the video size is actually 4 times as big. and yes you need more bitrate.

[kingmustard123]

Cheers lads.

[jman98]

The best solution would be to open the original project in movie maker and create a new output at the resolution you want. If you don't still have the original project then load low resolution video into movie maker and output at the higher resolution. It is going to look like it has been upscaled, so expect it to be softer than the original.

If I am double the video size, should I also double the bit rate (from 932 kbps to 1864 kbps)?

If you simply resize upward the 320x240 video you could use a bit rate that's sky high and it will most likely still look like crap. That's a pretty drastic resize you are proposing. For best quality you should try to get the original source and just save it at the correct resolution.

[kingmustard123]

The best solution would be to open the original project in movie maker and create a new output at the resolution you want. If you don't still have the original project then load low resolution video into movie maker and output at the higher resolution. It is going to look like it has been upscaled, so expect it to be softer than the original.

If I am double the video size, should I also double the bit rate (from 932 kbps to 1864 kbps)?

If you simply resize upward the 320x240 video you could use a bit rate that's sky high and it will most likely still look like crap. That's a pretty drastic resize you are proposing. For best quality you should try to get the original source and just save it at the correct resolution.

Original source = 8mm tape.

[Cornucopia]

8mm tape is still ~= 640x480, so it's much better to work with NO resize on a SD rez clip than to work with resize on a Low rez clip.

For youtube, one should ALWAYS give it the highest rez, original quality master upload one can (so says youtube, and I believe it).

Scott

[kingmustard123]

8mm tape is still ~= 640x480, so it's much better to work with NO resize on a SD rez clip than to work with resize on a Low rez clip.

For youtube, one should ALWAYS give it the highest rez, original quality master upload one can (so says youtube, and I believe it).

Scott

8mm tape is 320x240.

[dragonkeeper]

I do believe Kingmustard is correct 8mm is 320x240 unless its Hi8. I also agree with the others if you simply upscale, the video will look horrible. The video will look soft and most often the colors will appear to be a bit washed out.
I don't use Movie maker so I'm not sure of the filtering capabilities it offers but at the very minimum you will most likely want to adjust the colors and something similar to a spline sharping filter (IMO the best filter to perform an upscale). Note that since the video is in a lossy format you already have experienced some video quality loss. Once you perform the re-size and and the video is re-encoded you will experience additional loss in video quality.

To achieve the best possible quality. If you still have the original source i would recapture using Virtual Dub into a loss-less AVI format (HuffYUv or Lagarith i personally perfer Lagarith). From this point you can use Virtualdub or Avisynth to re-size (use Spline64 for best results) the video and then use the tool of choice to compress to a manageable file size ie mp4 or mkv.

All the tools mentioned to perform this are free and there are many guides available to explain their use.

[Cornucopia]

No.

You may have captured it incorrectly at 320x240, but Standard 8mm video, Hi8 video AND Digital 8 are all full Standard Def signals. That means, 8 & Hi8 are Analog with 3.58MHz Bandwidth and 525 lines (486 active), which, when converted to digital at BEST QUALITY, will be 720x480. And Digital 8 is already 720x480. Both with Non-square pixels, giving an effective resolution of 640x480, with a 4:3 DAR. Google/Wikipedia it.

Otherwise, your capturing methods are valid.

Scott

edit: kingmustard, I notice you're in the UK. So for you, it would be 720x576 (non-square); an equivalent square pixel resolution would be 768x576 at 4:3 DAR.

[jman98]

Whatever the true resolution of 8mm, etc. are (I do not care at all) you can still capture at 720x480 or 640x480 if you prefer. I've done plenty of VHS captures at that resolution and it's much better to just capture at the resolution you want than to capture well below it and upsize it. Try an experiment with captures at 320x240 and 640x480 and resize the first one up to the 2nd one's resolution. You'll see.

[jagabo]

The OP is in the UK. It's likely his video is PAL so he'll capture at 720x576 with an effective resolution of around 360x576. He may then have to deal with interlacing.

[edDV]

I do believe Kingmustard is correct 8mm is 320x240 unless its Hi8.

No, it is color under 576 lines PAL (486 lines NTSC) same as Hi8 or VHS/SVHS. The analog formats differ for luma bandwidth.

Video8 and VHS low pass around 3 MHz. This is roughly equivalent to 240x576 digital equivalent but most capture cards sample higher and filter down to 720x576 or 352x576. If you are doing a fresh capture for Youtube, I'd suggest 720x576. Your choice of capture codec ranges from uncompressed to "lossless" (Huffyuv or Lagrinth) to MPeg2 or wmv. The former "lossless" formats will need recompression to Youtube acceptable MPeg2 or h.264.

Hi8/SVHS capture luma out to a 4.5-5.0 MHz low pass. That is roughly equivalent to digital 400x576. Still best to capture to 640x480 (square pixel) or 720x480 (non-square pixel).

Now comes the strategy for better Youtube quality...

You need to understand Youtube takes a variety of formats in but will recode all to their latest house format at far lower bit rate. From prior experience, it seems they make no attempt at deinterlace so you need to do it.

First you can pre-filter but that is an advanced topic. Just understand you need to deinterlace.

Second, you can feed them bit rates up to a maximum file size/clip length. If the clips are short, you will get better recodes if you send them up to the highest bit rate they will accept (i.e. max file size = bit rate x seconds).

[kingmustard123]

I need help here guys and you all seem to know a lot about this stuff.

I am in the UK and I'm currently using AVS Video Recorded to capture the videos at 320x240, 29.97 FPS, 920.33 Kbits (basically, these values are all the software will allow).

Are these the optimal settings?

If not, what software should I use and what settings should I use?

[jagabo]

I need help here guys and you all seem to know a lot about this stuff.

I am in the UK and I'm currently using AVS Video Recorded to capture the videos at 320x240, 29.97 FPS, 920.33 Kbits (basically, these values are all the software will allow).

Are these the optimal settings?

No. You should be capturing at 720x576 or 352x576.

If not, what software should I use and what settings should I use?

I don't think you've said what capture device you're using.

[kingmustard123]

I need help here guys and you all seem to know a lot about this stuff.

I am in the UK and I'm currently using AVS Video Recorded to capture the videos at 320x240, 29.97 FPS, 920.33 Kbits (basically, these values are all the software will allow).

Are these the optimal settings?

No. You should be capturing at 720x576 or 352x576.

If not, what software should I use and what settings should I use?

I don't think you've said what capture device you're using.

A capture card (Compro VideoMate S350).

[aedipuss]

capture at the devices native resolution.
Capture Format
NTSC/PAL
Video ADCs
9-bit Video CMOS Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs)
Resolution (Screen size)
PAL 720*576 max NTSC 720*480 max
Video bit-rate
0.2M ~10 bit / second
Video Compression
ISO / IEC 13818-2 (MPEG-2) ISO

might be easiest to use the software that came with it, but others like virtualbub with mpeg-2 plugin should work.

[kingmustard123]

capture at the devices native resolution.
Capture Format
NTSC/PAL
Video ADCs
9-bit Video CMOS Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs)
Resolution (Screen size)
PAL 720*576 max NTSC 720*480 max
Video bit-rate
0.2M ~10 bit / second
Video Compression
ISO / IEC 13818-2 (MPEG-2) ISO

might be easiest to use the software that came with it, but others like virtualbub with mpeg-2 plugin should work.

I had lots of problems with VirtualDub. Is there another piece of software I can try perhaps?

[aedipuss]

might be easiest to use the software that came with it

[kingmustard123]

might be easiest to use the software that came with it

No software came with the £35 capture card, it was OEM.

[aedipuss]

http://comprousa.com/en/download/sseries.html?p=s350&d=1

[kingmustard123]

http://comprousa.com/en/download/sseries.html?p=s350&d=1

ComproDTV can not capture footage from what I can gather. It's just for using the satellite receiver aspect of the card.

[jagabo]

I had lots of problems with VirtualDub.

ViritualDub is one of the better capture programs. What problems where you having?

[kingmustard123]

I had lots of problems with VirtualDub.

ViritualDub is one of the better capture programs. What problems where you having?

Massively out-of-sync audio capture.

[jagabo]

Audio sync during capture is pretty easy to fix in VirtualDub:

First, make sure you are capturing audio from the capture card, not the audio card in your computer.

Then make sure you were capturing as YUY2 and using a fast compression codec like HuffYUV. Uncompressed is often too disk intensive -- causing dropped frames and audio sync problems. Using a fast codec like HuffYUV brings the disk I/O down enough without too much CPU usage.

Don't capture to your boot drive. Windows often decides to do some maintenance on the drive in the background. That will cause dropped frames and A/V sync problems. It's best to have a second internal drive for video capture.

If that doesn't work, go to the Capture -> Timing... dialog. Try turning off the "Do not resync between audio and video streams" settings. That usually fixes the remaining problems. If not, try playing with the other settings on that dialog.

Also, do not compress the audio while capturing. Leave it as uncompressed PCM.

[ronnylov]

You could try VirtualVCR for capturing. In order to capture full resolution I had to enable something called "Use Smart Tee Filter for Preview".
See http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/capturing_VirtualVCR.html
(I do have a Terratec Cinergy 400 TV capture card so this setting may not help with your capture card, but you could try it).
I also had to find older WDM drivers for my capture card because Terratec had changed to BDA drivers only...
But I found out it was using Philips SAA7134 chip so I could use a driver for that.

VirtualVCR is good at keeping audio sync when using the resample audio dynamically option.
I capture at 704x576 at 25 fps which works well for analogue PAL captures with my capture card.
Some capture cards (as mine) get wrong pixel aspect ratio at 720x576 so I have to use 704x576 instead.

If the tape is in bad condition (and get a lot of dropped frames) then the sound can still get out of sync.
Make sure that you set correct framerate. For PAL is should be 25.000 fps, not anything else.
For audio I have connected the output of the capture card to an input on my sound card.
I get best results when using 48 kHz audio sample frequency because this is the native sample frequency of my sound card.
You can test different audio sample rates and see which one works bust (32 kHz, 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz).
When going to DVD it would still need to be converted to 48 kHz so if 48 kHz works then don't change it.