Video Resolution or Aspect

[satan ahh lunn]

hello fellow members of jph!p, i have a question that i need to ask you guys.

what resolution and aspect of a video file do you think is best: 640x480 (4:3) or 720x480 (3:2)?

[Happosai]

The one closer to the original video resolution and aspect ratio.

[Guchi_Jnr]

The resolution on a standard 4:3 DVD is 720x480 which is stretched. When played, it gets compressed to 640x480, which is the same resolution as a 4:3 TV..

So, if you want to convert some 4:3 DVD to avi, make it 640x480, otherwise it's going to look stretched.. (i.e. short tubby people)

[ebc]

I guess what you need to remember is aspect ratio usually has nothing to do with the resolution of the video. Try to think of them as completely different things or you will confuse yourself.

So even though you have your dvd video res of 720x480 (ntsc) that resolution can be displayed as a 4:3 ratio or 16:9 ratio.
For Pal, you would have a res of 720x576 which can be displayed as either 4:3 or 16:9 as well.

The resolution of the original source of video will ALWAYS be that resolution. It doesn't actually change.

What does cause the the video to look either 4:3 or 16:9 is tag's in the video stream that tell the decoder to display the pixels as a particular ratio.

For playback of video on a computer, the video usually has to be resized with a pixel ratio of 1:1 hence the use of 640x480 for video that is encoded from a dvd source that is 720x480 at 4:3 aspect ratio.

However if the dvd source is a 16:9 aspect ratio, even though it's 720x480 resolution. You need to make sure that you resize it accordingly for it to be able to be played back on a computer properly. If you encode the video as anamorphic then it's fine to leave the video as it's original resolution but if you aren't (which usually is the case) you should resize it.
The resolution you choose is entirely up to you but you wanna choose something that won't make the original video look a different size than it should be. (circles turn out as ovals etc.)

[satan ahh lunn]

^^well ebc...here is the problem...i recently downloaded a VOB file of GAM...which includes Making of Thanks! and Melodies and Special Version of Melodies...but i don't know if this is a reliable program...(AVIcodec)...this program says that the VOB file of Melodies Making of...is 720*480 (16:9)...and the avi format...which i encoded??? with VDub...is 720*480 (4:3)... but when i watched both files with Nero Showtime...the VOB one is larger in height than the one of avi format...when i encode??? i didn't change the resolution of it...so why is that then???

[ebc]

I'll get back to you as soon as I get home (cause I'm at work atm) I have the iso of those single v's so I'll check the vobs myself and see what they are.

My guess though is that the video is actually 4:3 however it is actually letterboxed so there will be the black bars on the bottom and the top. This is usually the case with single v's. When you encode you will have to either encode as 4:3 and leave the black bars there. Or if the program you're using supports it you should crop the black bars out and encode it without them at a resolution that looks as close a possible to what 16:9 is. Usually something like 640x352 is around the resolution you'd encode the videoclips.

The making of will probably be 4:3 with no black bars and you would encode that at 640x480.

I think the problems you're having might be mostly to do with that program, but I'm not sure what features it has and how it handles the different types of video files.

If you use virtualdub though, generally you would resize the video to 640x480 then if it's got black bars on the top and bottom you would crop them out so the resolution is something like 640x352

If the vob really is anamorphic (is widescreen but doesn't use black bars on top and bottom) then you can choose to resize it to be a larger horizontal resolution and leave the vertical res as 480. So the res would actually be something like 853x480 (just an example)
Usually you don't do this though, it would create quite a large file to encode.
Usually you resize it so the horizontal res is equal to or less than 720 and you scale down the vertical res to somewhere around 380-400

[frblckstr1]

I have found mediainfo ( http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en ) to be rather good at detecting what is inside a video file.

Going solely by the 'external' resolution is not enough, although when someone strips the 16x9 information only a visial inspection of the contents will determine what it actually is.