DVD Resolution

[Bruce Meyers]

What is native dvd resolution that you'd find on a main stream movie dvd? What resolution would you find on that disc if you were to pull it off and look at it on a comp? Assuming it's full screen not 16:9 or 2.35:1 what's the reso?

[Tim Gray]

The video resolution on NTSC discs is 720 × 480 and on PAL discs is 720 × 576.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd

[Luis Otero]

The main issue in commercial DVDs is the difference in QUALITY of those 720X480 pixels, which will depend 100% on the quality of the original matrerial, and the aquisition method (interlaced or progressive). Some of them, using interlaced originated material, will continue to look as video, as opposed to DVDs created with material originated with progressive technology. Of course, lighting, composition, sound, camera movements, and other cinematic issues are extremely essential to the quality of those final 720X480 pixels.

Luis

[Robert M Wright]

Just about all commercially produced NTSC DVDs are recorded at 720x480 resolution (regardless of aspect ratio). DVD specifications do allow for other resolutions, such as 352x480 though (only 4:3 though).

I'm sometimes amazed at the low quality of the images on some commercial DVDs. You don't notice on a run of the mill standard television, because the resolution the TV display is so low, but on a good high definition television or monitor (played from a device that properly upscales the image), many movies (even relatively new ones) aren't all that crisp and often have quite noticeable video noise in the picture.

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Bruce Meyers

What is native dvd resolution that you'd find on a main stream movie dvd? What resolution would you find on that disc if you were to pull it off and look at it on a comp? Assuming it's full screen not 16:9 or 2.35:1 what's the reso?

Mpeg files (VOB) on NTSC DVD discs are almost always 640 x 480, square pixels. When a film is "enhanced for widescreen TVs" it just means that the film is anamorphically squeezed into 640x480 and the DVD player either letterboxes it for display on 4x3 or does nothing for display on 16x9 TVs. The same goes for 2.35:1 and other widescreen formats. The file is still 640x480, but is cropped slightly in an anamorphic format.

[Joe Russ]

Tim, I think you mean 720x480 with a .9 pixel aspect ratio for NTSC 4:3 and 720x480 with a 1.2 PAR for anamorphic 16:9 material. The stretched resolution of the video is either 720x540/960x540 or 640x480/853.Xx480.

Pal is all 576 height vs 480. This is standard, but 640x480 (actual pixel dimensions) is an invalid dvd resolution.

[Robert M Wright]

There's actually no square pixels for any of the standard DVD compliant resolutions/aspects.

[Nate Weaver]

Just to clarify...

NTSC MPEG2 files on a Mac are reported in Quicktime player and many applications as 640x480, but they're not...they're really 720x480.

Unlike many NTSC media files, Quicktime is "smart" about those MPEG2 files and squeezes them .9 for you and reports them as such, even though it's not the truth.

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

Just to clarify...

NTSC MPEG2 files on a Mac are reported in Quicktime player and many applications as 640x480, but they're not...they're really 720x480.

Unlike many NTSC media files, Quicktime is "smart" about those MPEG2 files and squeezes them .9 for you and reports them as such, even though it's not the truth.

Ah.. That explains it. So commercial DVDs are 720 x 480.

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Joe Russ

The stretched resolution of the video is either 720x540/960x540 or 640x480/853.Xx480.

Not really. It is 720 x 480 any way you look at it. Those would be "equivalent" pixel counts I suppose, but the file size is the same regardless of aspect ratio.