Acoustica Mixcraft 7 - Manual (Page 185)

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720x480 NTSC - Remember that big heavy thing with a glass screen that used to
reside in your living room? Me neither. Before high-def, 720x480 was the standard for
televisions in the US. NTSC is an acronym for, “bunch of guys who used to argue about
US analog TV standards and are probably now unemployed.” Actually, it stood for
“National Television System Committee.”
720x576 PAL - The European equivalent of the NTSC, with slightly different
dimensions and a different number of resolution lines so you couldn’t play your Fellini
and Truffaut VHS tapes in the US.
1280x720 - Referred to as 720p, this is the smaller of high definition formats,
generally seen in the “first wave” of flat-panel LCD TV’s and digital cameras with video
capabilities.
1440x1080 - Referred to as 1080p, this is super high-def, butterfly-wings-in-your-face-
at-the-store resolution. The difference between 1080p and 1080i gets a little confusing,
but the basic idea is that the “p” stands for “progressive scan,” meaning that displays
are drawn one after the other for more realistic motion. Progressive scan presents the
most realistic motion.
1920x1080 - Referred to as 1080i, the difference between this and 1080p is that
display line drawing is “interlaced.” Content is broadcast at 30 frames per second, but
it’s displayed at 60 frames per second by drawing lines in two passes; one for even lines
and one for odd lines. This is done to reduce perceived flicker.
OPTIMIZING VIDEO OUTPUT
If you’re using the WMV Compression Settings dialog, you’ll probably want to dig
in and read all the details, but here are a few quick answers to help assist with some
common goals:
How do I achieve the highest quality video?
Using the Variable Bit Rate with quality setting encoding option and then setting its
quality slider to the highest setting (by sliding it all the way to the right) will almost
always produce the highest quality results, but it will also produce files that are about
three times larger than other methods. If that’s too big, try reducing the quality slider
a bit or choosing a different encoding method. (That said, we don’t recommend the
Constant Bit Rate (1 pass) method, as it usually produces low-quality results.) Which
encoding method works best generally differs depending on the video content; you
might have to experiment with multiple methods.
Bit rate also has a large impact on video quality. Higher bit rates will result in higher
video quality, albeit with larger file sizes. There will usually be a point at which a higher
bit rate won’t have any noticeable effect, but raising the rate won’t hurt video quality.