How good is 640x480 resolution?

[erasable]

Hihi,

I recently came up with an AMV idea I liked and started hording raws!
Among my problems...
I was reading the AMV how to guide All things Video and audio...
The guide said soemthing about 740x525 scanlines?
Is that really necessary?
What would be a recommended resolution?
What would be a minimal resolution?
Also I digress...what would be a minimal bitrate for audio?

Thanks!

--erasable

[dokool]

Hihi,

I recently came up with an AMV idea I liked and started hording raws!
Among my problems...
I was reading the AMV how to guide All things Video and audio...
The guide said soemthing about 740x525 scanlines?
Is that really necessary?
What would be a recommended resolution?
What would be a minimal resolution?
Also I digress...what would be a minimal bitrate for audio?

Thanks!

--erasable

The guide assumes you're editing with DVDs. (720x480 resolution, 525 scanlines which is a TV thing). What happens with DVDs is that the image is squeezed for TV (640x480, the same resolution your raws are in).

I'll give you a pass on the fact that you're using downloaded footage since at least you've made the effort to find raws. You're going to want to edit your video at 640x480, 24FPS.

As far as audio bitrate, you'll want your audio source to be uncompressed PCM ripped from the CD and "adjusted" to 24FPS (check AD's guide for more on this). When you encode to MP3, I'd say 192kbps is a good standard, anything less and you'll notice the difference. If the song is incredibly intricate you might want to bump that up to 320 to preserve the sound.

[MousePotato]

Your going to want to set up your project at 720X480 only if your using a 4:3 pixel aspect ratio. (TV's display video with none square pixels where as computer monitors; particularlly LCDs, display video at 620X480 using a pixel aspect ratio of 1:1; also called square pixels.)
Either way, whatever frame size you chose directly effects your pixel aspect ratio.

[trythil]

Either way, whatever frame size you chose directly effects your pixel aspect ratio.

The frame size does not affect pixel aspect ratio. Indeed, it doesn't even affect your display aspect ratio: 512x384 has the same display aspect ratio as 640x480 on any device. (The ratio of frame width to frame height, however, does affect your display aspect ratio.) Pixel aspect ratio is a characteristic of the display device, and cannot be changed by altering encoding parameters.

Some media players can, given pixel aspect ratio and intended display aspect ratio data, resize video upon playback to compensate, but that is not affecting the PAR of the display device.

[MousePotato]

I guess I was confussed by the two. sry. Although you do want to adjust your PAR in accordence with your frame size so you can avoid stretching the picture.