by ErMaC » Sat Jun 29, 2002 7:29 pm
MPEG1 at 720x480 is just silly. First off, MPEG1 does not handle interlaced video so if you've got interlaced video at that resolution it'll look like crap. MPEG1 does not scale in terms of bitrate vs. resolution - one of the reasons they developed MPEG2. MPEG1 was made to do VCD sized video, not full NTSC quality.
If you're encoding at that kind of resolution, I don't know why on earth you'd even THINK of distributing it online, therefore the issue of people not being able to playback MPEG2 video is moot. At 720x480 you'd need such a high bitrate that distro online would be prohibitive due to filesize. Perhaps if your video is short you could do this, but I wouldn't recommend doing this.
Unless your video is a bunch of stills, the bitrate required to make your video look good would give you a filesize that I would never distro online, so my recommendation is to just go with MPEG2 since you're trying to archive the stuff at that point. If your video is interlaced, you can use MPEG2's interlaced-awareness to your advantage and just leave it interlaced. MPEG1 won't give you that option.
To answer your original question, if you're looking for good quality, I'd use TMPGEnc's Constant Quality option. Set the CQ to 90% or 95%, or if that's too big try 85% or keep going down in increments of 5% until you have acceptable filesize or your video starts looking like someone's innards after falling out of a hatchet wound.