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Encoding hi-bitrate for XGA Beamer?
hi,
I was wondering if it makes sense to encode a SD-Pal video that will be shown on an XGA-Beamer as XGA (1024 x 768) MPEG-2 instead of using PAL resolution (720 x 576)?
Or would it better to let the beamer/player handle the upscaling to the beamer’s better resolution?
Intuitively I would say the power of my computer and AME-encoder should give better results than any on-the-fly upscaling… or does this break some norm?
thanks for any advice, n.
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3 Replies
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If you’re using a regular SD DVD player to play this, then you will have to encode using a standard def resolution and let the beamer (projector, for those of us in the US) do the upscaling. That’s a limitation of the output resolution of the DVD player.
If you really insist on AME handing the upres, then you could encode using H.264 at the projector’s native resolution and play that file back using a laptop connected to the projector. Just test it first, since large high res H.264 files can give you trouble (stuttering, video/audio sync issues) when you don’t use a robust enough computer for playback.
Mike Tomei
Intel i7-930 2.8GHz
12 GB RAM
1 GB VRAM
Adobe Production Premium CS5
https://www.miketomei.com -
Thanks for the advice, Mike.
It is specifically becuase I am not using a DVD-player that I thought I could avoid the limitations of a DVD-player’s resolution.
The file will be played by a mini-mac… outputted to a XGA-beamer via VGA. So I thought AME would do the work of upscaling the SD-video file better than the beamer could.
I guess there is too much hardware-variation for there to be a golden rule for this. The problem I have is that the equipment where the client wants this file to be played is only 1800 km away from my current place-of-residence, which makes it hard to test.
Maybe I just should go the “safe” route, and keep SD just like it is, SD.
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Yes, too many unknowns to really figure out the exact answer here. As a general rule, you can assume that the Mac Mini’s DVD playback software will upscale quickly but probably not as effectively as AME would do. In my opinion, creating a higher res H.264 file and relying on the Mac Mini to play it properly is a higher risk option, and the quality difference won’t be noticeable enough to take that risk. If you were starting with an HD source, then I would say doing everything you can to not drop it to SD would be best, but that’s not the case.
Hope that is helpful.
Mike Tomei
Intel i7-930 2.8GHz
12 GB RAM
1 GB VRAM
Adobe Production Premium CS5
https://www.miketomei.com
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