Scaled Down vs Exact Resolution

[rahamanpatrick]

This may be a silly question so excuse me if it is, but I'm converting some videos for my new iPod Touch and am wondering whether the quality would be noticeably better if I convert at 640 X 480 resolution (the output to TV resolution) and have it scale down to 480×320 (the iPod Touch's screen resolution).

I don't ever plan to output these videos to TV, so the only benefit would be if they look better scaled down rather than at exact resolution. I don't see how they would, but I thought I'd ask anyway!

Thanks in advance, Patrick O.

[glc]

The higher resolution you use to do the conversion, the better the quality will be. However, you have to balance this off against file sizes.

[rahamanpatrick]

Originally Posted by glc

The higher resolution you use to do the conversion, the better the quality will be. However, you have to balance this off against file sizes.

Really? I would have thought that since the highest resolution the iPod can display is 480×320 it would have made no difference to be larger than that.

Why is it that scaling down to a lower resolution makes the quality better?

Thanks for the reply!

[Force Flow]

If you're only using the video on the iPod screen, you won't benefit from a video with a higher resolution...it will be scaled down as it's displayed.

If you're concerned about quality, a higher video bitrate will give you a better quality picture at a given resolution (to a point--basically, raise it high enough to avoid seeing the "blocky" effects you'd normally see with compressed video).

[rahamanpatrick]

Originally Posted by Force Flow

If you're only using the video on the iPod screen, you won't benefit from a video with a higher resolution...it will be scaled down as it's displayed.

Right, that's what I thought, nice to have confirmation!

Thanks for the help