RESIZE video / for PLAYBACK image (not filesize)

[mrlewp]

I've read posts , looked into Vdub help contents. I cant come up with it. working with already compressed .avi files. (or "reduced"....I dont know, just know that they're small for the length in terms of time)
So, I thought I'd contend with reduced image on TV screen (DVD project) if I could see a sharper image, with black background !
Can I do this?

ALSO..need to clarify about (not filesize) in topic line. Often that is the concern when I read about resizing. The image size is what I'm after.
BUT, on that note>> WHY would V'dub take a 700mb+ .avi , and bloat it into a 13GIG .avi ???....just in doing the PAL to NTSC recode?

[paglamon]

WHY would V'dub take a 700mb+ .avi , and bloat it into a 13GIG .avi ???

Because you did not use any video compressor(e.g XviD) and saved the avi as uncompressed.

[mrlewp]

But I also didnt use video expansion (ok , I made that up...but you get the point,right?)
The 1/2 hr. video has about 36,000 frames. Divided by 25 , that's about 1440. 1440 X 5, ... to get near 30fps. , is 7200 extra frames needed. (( 700mb/36,000...X {36,000 + 7200 } = 840mb filesize. Just wondered why Vdub goes overboard. I cant even begin to use the 13gig file in an app , and compressing the original gives me an awful video image.

This gets me back to first question, about keeping the video image smaller when doing conversions. The original PAL .avi video looks great on PC. When I convert to NTSC / DVD , regardless of method.....it looks worse than VHS @ top speed !??

[blutach]

pagla is correct. You need to use a compressor.

Regards

[paglamon]

@mrlewp

DVD format has some typical restrictions regarding resolution. You have to accept the standards.Valid DVD resolutions:

MPEG-1: 352x240 (NTSC) ; 352x288 (PAL)
MPEG-2: 352x480, 704x480, 720x480 (NTSC) ; 352x576, 704x576, 720x576 (PAL)

So you can resize the video to 352x480.
What did you use to convert to DVD ? You are going into an extra step by first converting the PAL avi to NTSC avi thus reducing the quality of the original. Go straight from PAL avi to NTSC DVD. Try DVD-Flick(freeware). However IMO Canopus Procoder(not free,unfortunately) does the best job.

BTW, you are totally off track regarding compression of avi. In Virtualdub, if you do not use any compressor to encode a video,it will always encode as Uncompressed avi,which is huuuuuuuge.Encoding without a compressor does not mean that the original file remains untouched. It is re-encoded (as uncompressed avi) at a much higher bitrate to produce a gigantic file.

[Fox12]

Can try Video Enhancer, it makes impressive video uprezzing:

http://www.thedeemon.com/VideoEnhancer/

However, prepare for a time-consuming procedure, especially with a single-core machine.