# What determines Video Quality??



## dalt (Apr 14, 2003)

Hi all,

Easy one for most i'm sure, any help much appreciated.

What determines video quality, i have downloaded a few movies from the net.
I had a 500mhz system, now i have a athlon 1800+ system at 1540 mhz , the quality of the video playback is exactly the same.
So my question is what determines the frame rate and quality, what difference does the video card make, i had a el-cheapo 4mb video card, the new one is 32 mb, but no better pic quality. Also are there any settings on the comp in regards to video that may help?

Any suggestions on getting better quality when playing back downloaded movies.

Thanks from a newbie but getting there slowly!


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

Its the quality of the rip of the movie thats the bottleneck here.
They are encoded low so that they will fit on a VCD or two.
You need to download the movies at good quality.
Here are the diff. types of rips, in order of worst to best.

Cam
Telesync (TS)
VHS Rip
TV Capture
Screener
DVD Rip

Thats the big ones, but there are a few more methods too.


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## Mariusz (Mar 16, 2003)

video card determines the overall speed (but if a movie is coded for 15fps, thats all u'll get)

video memory determines highest color/resolution setting and overall speed 

quality is determined by the compression used in the video

if u got a crappy movie coded at 300x200 at 10fps, u can run it on a quad opteron and ati radeon 9800 pro 128mb, it will still suck just like on an amd k6 233, 2mb integrated video (although it will load faster, and will not slow down during play when u move the mouse )


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## gotrootdude (Feb 19, 2003)

Brendon, you must live on Usenet.  

I wait a while and get a good divx DVD rip. Then maybe re-encode for SVCD if I wish to use it in the DVD player. If your playing SMR's or cam versions, your going to get low quality. High quality Divx will show improvement on a better machine with a better vid card on a higher color depth. Some of the Cam rips lately have come close or better than screener quality. Telescinc still stinks. TV capture depends on the encoder.


Isn't the internet grand, whenever there's nothing on TV, my wife says, "Honey, go download a movie for us."


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

The MPAA might be putting a sort of filter or something on the big screens so it will screw up the picture from a cam/ts. And its going to be really hard to filter out because its not just a infrared strobe its a frame rate change and everything.
But the screeners are often available along with the cams so thats the best way to go.


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## dalt (Apr 14, 2003)

Thankyou for all the suggestions and information.
The worst bit is i suppose that i only have normal dial up with 56k modem, so to download a dvd rip at around 700000 kb it would take about a week, so most have to get the other types at around 200000 kb . But can't complain.
Is there much difference between a 32mb and 64 mb video card in regards to quality?
Also what is 

a quad opteron and ati radeon 9800 pro?

Peter


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## Mariusz (Mar 16, 2003)

like i said 32mb and 64mb makes no difference for quality 

heh, an opteron is the upcoming amd 64bit server cpu a quad is four of them on one system

ati radeon 9800 is a top of the line video card wit 128mb memory and the fastest gaming performance for home users

was just trying to make a point abt hardware influence on quality of video


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## carltasha (Nov 7, 2001)

A quad opteron is 4 tiger slugs working in sly mode , they can eat the biggest tomato plant you ever saw in 90 seconds , I dont know what the other thing is


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