Editing...

[Hujio]

Hey EX, when you edit what you've ripped off the actual DVD in VirtualDub, is there anyway to change the frame size, as far as from 640X480 to say 320X240 and so on?

[VegettoEX]

DVD standard resolution is 720x480. If you're working on a video, you're going to want to keep it at its native resolution... that's just how it works.

However, for your final online distribution version, you'll probably want to resize to something like 512x384 or 352x240. This is post- production work, though, and is something you'd let TMPEG or VirtualDub do when you're doing your online distro encode.

Does that make much sense? It's a kinda quick reply, so lemme know if I'm even addressing what you need or asked ^^;;.

[Hujio]

That makes sense. I use TMPEG after I'm done editing the video with Adobe Premiere, I was just wondering if you resized it before editing it in Premiere or after with TMPEG. So that mostly answers my question.

On the other hand, could you help me out at all with TMPEG. Is there anything I should make sure to do or specs to change when encoding it to MPEG format with TMPEG. I just want to make sure I get the best quality out of the encoding process without having a huge file to deal with, as do most people.

[VegettoEX]

Yeah; resizing is something you do post-editing. Anything you do to your video, in terms of altering as a whole, should be done once the entire thing's done and exported as a new whole.

Also, do you have the HuffyUV codec? It's a lossless compression scheme, meaning you won't lose any quality in the export, and it's significantly smaller in filesize than uncompressed AVI is.

Anyway, for TMPG...

My encodes, since I learned what I was doing, have always been 352x240 with a 2-pass variable bitrate (3000 max, 2000 average, 300 minimum). This actually isn't the greatest way to encode, anymore (some "constant quality" settings have been tinkered with to be more effective), but it's what I'm most familiar with, so... *shrugs* Then again, once you start getting above 2000 kbps with a 352x240 MPEG-1 file, it starts to make little difference...


http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~vegex/misc ... mplate.mcf

Here's an example of the basic template I start from. From here, I'll go into the "Advanced" tab and go into "Clip Frame" and clip out the black bars on all four sides. Note that my template is also at 23.976 fps; this is becaused I've got it all inverse-telecined (which is something you do in the AVS scripts pre-editing). If your final export is at 29.97 fps, interlaced, you'll want to deinterlace the video on final encoding (I've always liked the "Double" option, where it kinda blends the fields together, but that's just me). Audio I like to keep at 192 kbps, MPEG-1 layer 2 (MP2).

Hopefully that makes a little sense. Lemme know if it doesn't ^^;;.

Note that this is all just for online distribution encoding. Once you start talking about DVD-compatible MPEG-2/AC3 audio, or a simply high-bitrate MPEG-2 for archival and convention purposes... totally different settings ^^.