quality

[Cal]

hey, what is the best resolution/quality when downloading movies?

[Enchanter]

When downloading? I guess there is not much you can do to affect the quality at this stage, is there? The quality of the movie will depend on how well the encoder has done the job.

That said, I can give you one general rule of thumb. One CD (700MB) rips of shows longer than 2 hours are most likely to look below average or even "crap".

[Cal]

quality-encoding

is there a way to set the quality you want in the encoding process? i am using TMPGEnc Plus

[Yakuza]

Cal,

your question is a really tough one, because everyone has his own tolerance factor for quality.

I never download movies because most of them are in fact crap.
Although file size isn't an absolut factor (i've seen 2 cd movies that look worse than their 1 cd version), movies with a length of 1:30 should be able to fit on a 700 MB cd with dvd resolution 720x ? (height depends on the aspect ratio of the movie 16:9, 4:3,... and black bars)/cd quality audio/25 frames per second (PAL).

Now, you won't be able to find that many movies that have full dvd resolution, but a movie that has a width of 352 is obviously not that good (although it might look good if you output it to your tv screen). To lower the filesize, a lot of rippers decrease the framerate to 23 frames/second.

Enchanter's rule is true. You can't fit a 2 hour show in 700 MB with good quality.

Beware of anything that says 'screener'. Although it might be tempting to see a movie that is not out on dvd yet.

You're question said 'resolution/quality'.
I'm almost sure a resolution that has a width of 576 will be satisfactory for you. But resolution doesn't include quality. One 576 movie might look good, the other one really bad. Compare it to a jpeg compressed at full quality and at low quality.

Hopefully my (long) answer helps you a bit.

[Enchanter]

Although file size isn't an absolut factor (i've seen 2 cd movies that look worse than their 1 cd version), movies with a length of 1:30 should be able to fit on a 700 MB cd with dvd resolution 720x ?

I don't see any point in using the full resolution of 720x(). This does not add much to the quality (and in fact worsening it when using limited amount of bitrate, ie. 1000kbps and below). Did I also mention that more CPU power will be needed to decode the resultant video as well?

To lower the filesize, a lot of rippers decrease the framerate to 23 frames/second.

Irrelevant, if you are talking about PAL sources (which are 25 fps). When dealing with originally-FILM NTSC sources (which are originally 23.976fps and sped up to 29.97fps), a process called Inverse Telecine is used to bring back the framerate to 23.976fps (and also removing interlace artifacts). This process does not affect quality of the resultant video at all.

If framerate reduction were desired, one would be more inclined to reduce the framerate to 20fps and below, though it is not a recommended thing to do (ie. I can tolerate macroblocks better than "jitters").

[Yakuza]

The 23 frames/second looks fine on a monitor. When distributed to a tv screen the picture can get 'hickups' on fast motion i.e. a zoom and float over a panoramic view.

I didn't say everyone needs to encode in full dvd resolution. I wanted to point out that this was about the best you could do.