screen size over quality?

Nny · Post by **Nny** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 5:48 pm

I have basically finished my new music video, all thats left is some minor perfecting. all of my previous video's i have realeased were 240 x 180 because the quality with that screen size is superior than 320 x 240. however, i have gotten complaints because the screen size was smaller.

so basically what i'm asking is.....whats more important, quality or screensize?

Mask of Destiny · Post by **Mask of Destiny** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 6:41 pm

Well you need to find a balance between size and quality when you are compressing video. Both effec the final output quality. Generally speaking VCD resolution is standard for AMVs which is around 320x240, but it's stretched a little bit. I don't remember the exact dimmensions, but I'm sure one of the guides will tell you that. My suggestion would be to mess around a bit and see what looks good to you.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 6:53 pm

If you are having to release them that small, consider using a better compression format such as divx.

The Wired Knight · Post by **The Wired Knight** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 6:57 pm

Look for a balance that is good between teh two. I've had the same situation with my old program and got complaints at both ends. However go with the smaller size. After enlarging smetimes teh pixelation gets so bad you can't tell what is on screen, let alone the bacground. The major pixelation becomes very distracting and is very ugly. You are safer with the situation of smaller screen size that people can actually watch and recognize what is onscreen at the time.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 7:10 pm

bahhhhhh i dont get you people. You all release 320x240 stuff that is worse quality wise than my 640x480 stuff and then you blame it on resolution

Actually, the assumption that bitrate and resolution scale at the same ratio is completely wrong. A 640x480 video may be 4 times larger than a 320x240 vid but you must remember that the spatial compressibility also increases.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 7:11 pm

:P*
damn emoticons

NicholasDWolfwood · Post by **NicholasDWolfwood** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 7:14 pm

When I use DVD source, I scale it down to 480x360. I'm going to run some tests when I get my new chip, so I can see what res looks best with AVISynth-DVD source.

Nny · Post by **Nny** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 8:46 pm

thanks all for the help ^_^

currently experimenting with resolutions imbetween 240 x 180 and 320 x 240 while still keeping the aspect ratio. i'm probably going to go with 280 x 208.

You all release 320x240 stuff that is worse quality wise than my 640x480 stuff and then you blame it on resolution

when you shrink something, quality becomes better. so yes, resolution does play a part in quality.

RadicalEd0 · Post by **RadicalEd0** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 9:40 pm

yeah but most often the bad quality is caused by bad encodes and not the resolution, that was my point. Besides, read what I said about compressibility of larger sized things :p
Take my word as holy for I am a l33t video geek 8)

ErMaC · Post by **ErMaC** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 9:54 pm

Hot Ice Hilda wrote:when you shrink something, quality becomes better. so yes, resolution does play a part in quality.

Say What?

I'm sorry, you obviously have no idea what the word "quality" means.
First off - quality is a subjective measure of how good something looks.

If you think shrinking resolution = higher "quality", why not distribute your video in 64 pixels by 48 pixels? Heck, I'm sure your filesizes would be tiny, and those 3072 pixels would all look just perfect!
I'll tell you why - because then you can't see what the hell is going on.
The way compression works when it's scaled over resolution is very complicated. If you took out the whole spatial compression factor it'd be simple - you wind up with a bits per pixel measure requirement depending on your bitrate and resoluiton. But when you throw spatial compression into the mix that all goes out the window because suddenly the bits are redistributed around the frame where they need to be.

Here's a very basic set of rules to go by:
As resolution increases, potential detail increases as well as bitrate required.
If you're trying to reach a desired filesize, removing detail from the picture can IMPROVE picture quality because they become easier to compress and thus the detail that is there is rendered very well, as opposed to the full detail being rendered poorly (i.e. causing MPEG artifacts because too many bits are required).
Thus the best way to achieved the highest "quality" is to find a balance between resolution, picture detail, and bitrate that gives you acceptable filesize and reasonable picture quality.
For me, this is around 480x352 (note that 360 is not a multiple of 16 and thus a no-no) for fullscreen and 512x272 for widescreen. at these resolutions, I can include a lot of detail in the pictures while still maintaining a reasonable bitrate after some prefiltering.
Unless I'm making a VCD (which I won't, because I hate them in terms of quality) I do not encode at resolutions smaller than 480 in the horizontal direction anymore.