Which videos are the best quality etc.?

[PTRACER]

I've looked into changing my encoding methods to get better quality videos, as I thought I've been losing a lot of the quality by doing various things to the clips.

Here I have six clips from 2 different sources - one is a VHS source, the other is a DVD source. Both were recorded from the TV.

Please can you tell me what is preferable from each source:

VHS Source
All clips: DivX 6.8 - Deinterlaced - Bitrate: 3000kb/s

Not Cropped or resized - 720 x 576 - 2.72MB
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk/videos/te ... nocrop.avi

DivX 6.8 - Deinterlaced - Cropped only - 688 x 562 - 2.75MB
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk/videos/test/vhs-crop.avi

DivX 6.8 - Deinterlaced - Cropped and resized - 472 x 384 - 3.2MB
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk/videos/te ... resize.avi


DVD Source
All clips: DivX 6.8 - Deinterlaced - Bitrate: 3000kb/s

DivX 6.8 - Deinterlaced - Not Cropped or resized - 720 x 576 - 3.11MB
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk/videos/te ... nocrop.avi

DivX 6.8 - Deinterlaced - Cropped only - 700 x 564 - 3.14MB
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk/videos/test/dvd-crop.avi

DivX 6.8 - Deinterlaced - Cropped and resized - 476 x 384 - 3.82MB
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk/videos/te ... resize.avi

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There is no difference in quality between the cropped and uncropped videos, although cropping does result in a slightly odd resolution. I'm assume that most, if not all people, intend to play the clips on their computer only, therefore I crop the black lines which would otherwise not be seen when watching on a standard television.

I also noticed a substantial loss in quality and an increase in file size when resizing these clips, which I found pretty odd. With larger clips, the file sizes tended to be almost the same.

[Barre]

vhs-crop and dvd-crop for me, i always crop my own videos and resize them to 640 x ... and keep the 4/3 aspect ratio but for my Topgear videos i use 700 x ...

[Seppi]

Same choices as Barre

[Jesper Hvid]

Any suits me, really.

[PTRACER]

I have decided to stick with cropped only, not resized. I encoded two 21 minute DivX videos at 2000kb/s - 1 cropped and 1 cropped and resized. Both ended up 328MB in size.