What's your prefered resolution?

[TEKnician]

i dunno, scaling 480 down to 400 seems like a LOT, but apparently it's okay. Guess it just looks small on my 27" iMac.

THANKS FOR YOUR HELP Phantasmagoriat!

[Phantasmagoriat]

i dunno, scaling 480 down to 400 seems like a LOT, but apparently it's okay. Guess it just looks small on my 27" iMac.

THANKS FOR YOUR HELP Phantasmagoriat!

No problem. You'll also want to crop off any tiny black borders along the edges first, so if you use crop(8,0,-8,-0), you would be using 704 instead of 720 for width. I also want to make it clear that what I've said are just general guidelines not set in stone. You don't have to be too afraid when altering the height or width. On the contrary, it could act as a cleaning step, so just use whatever dimensions you want as long as width/height~=1.7777 (for 16:9 footage). Down-scaling the height might bit much if you are really concerned about quality, but the other option besides (anamorphic encoding) is to do a minor upscale to ~848x480, which is what a lot of people do. Hell, if you have the time/space, you might as well do it. It'll also make the '480p' option appear on YouTube. Just be mindful of the difference in amount of data that needs to be processed 704*396=278784px vs 848*480=407040px (~46% more pixels to encode/decode/store), and you don't exactly gain much. Like, personally I doubt I'm gonna watch your AMV and say to myself: "wow, look at that crappy 396p footage... it would look sooo much better at 480p!" 720p maybe, but at that point, I'm watching your AMV, not looking at quality, so I'll let you decide what's important.

[TEKnician]

OMFG...Final cut keeps altering my imported footage to 720x480 because it can't recognize 720x400! DAMMIT!

Okay, how about this: 853x480 anamorphic. 853/480=1.777. It seems to work fine when i send it to FCPX.

Would I be too picky if i said i wanted ALL my footage to be 853x480 too? Even my Eureka Seven DVDs which are 4:3? lets say i resized my E7 DVDs to match 16:9, if they are the same AR but not the same height/width, would a minor difference in size affect the project as a whole?

Thanks in advance!

[Nya-chan Production]

So far I have used only a few ARs - 848x480 being the most used one, but I also used 640x480, 1280x720 and for fun some 2,37:1 (1280x540 and 848x360)

[Phantasmagoriat]

OMFG...Final cut keeps altering my imported footage to 720x480 because it can't recognize 720x400! DAMMIT!

A lot of NLE's will try to automatically adjust your footage to meet DVD standards, especially since most people capture their footage using a camera intended for DVD output. I hate it when programs try to automate things for me . Unless FC has an option to manually input your Resolution and Aspect Ratio, you may be stuck with the project-templates it provides. But I'm not a FC user, so IDK.

Okay, how about this: 853x480 anamorphic. 853/480=1.777. It seems to work fine when i send it to FCPX.

I would consider trying 848x480 if you can, simply because certain programs, filters, and encoding techniques later may require pixel-divisibility by 8, or at least 4. In computing, the 'magic' numbers are any exponential values of 2, like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64. The higher the value, the more compatible/efficient, which is the reasoning behind mod16. However, if 853 works, I guess that's the most important thing. You can always crop/resize your final AMV later. Just try to be aware of any black borders it may add; or resizing FC does to your footage. One of the biggest causes of quality loss is when an NLE alters your footage somehow without you knowing. The best results are always achieved when your footage passes straight through your NLE.

Would I be too picky if i said i wanted ALL my footage to be 853x480 too? Even my Eureka Seven DVDs which are 4:3? lets say i resized my E7 DVDs to match 16:9, if they are the same AR but not the same height/width, would a minor difference in size affect the project as a whole?

I don't really see the point in resizing a 4:3 source to 853x480. Everything would look stretched horizontally, unless you flagged or resized it afterwards. There are 3 main ways to make 4:3 footage 16:9: Resizing to "Fit" 853x480 (in this case, 640x480). Cropping off the top/bottom and scaling up the result to match your resolution, or adding pillarboxes to the sized. You may find the pictures in my BestFit() function useful to understand what I mean. Just go to the the pictures labeled [FULLSCREEN SOURCE]:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 5&t=100248

[Nya-chan Production]

Would I be too picky if i said i wanted ALL my footage to be 853x480 too? Even my Eureka Seven DVDs which are 4:3? lets say i resized my E7 DVDs to match 16:9, if they are the same AR but not the same height/width, would a minor difference in size affect the project as a whole?

Yes. There's no reason to, really, if they were "made" in different resolutions. It's a bit like having a circle and a square and want to save them both in a same shape. At least one of them will be distorted or cropped (or worse, both of them).

[outlawed]

Funimation says to just upscale everything to 1080p =p

[TEKnician]

I mean no disrespect, but earlier, i mentioned that i cant avisynth on my iMac because of Lion 10.7.1's software incompatibility issue. I REEEEEAALLY DONT WANNA RUN PARALLELS. Crossover and Wine don't work either.

[Phantasmagoriat]

Oh, sorry my bad. I didn't notice you were a Mac user. I guess you're stuck using whatever settings FC lets you use. In this case leaving it at 720x480 and flagging it with the correct AR might not be such a bad choice. Just be careful that any effects/text you add don't get warped by the stretching of your footage.

[Qyot27]

I mean no disrespect, but earlier, i mentioned that i cant avisynth on my iMac because of Lion 10.7.1's software incompatibility issue. I REEEEEAALLY DONT WANNA RUN PARALLELS. Crossover and Wine don't work either.

Did you try the MacPorts solution?