Changing resolution

[Guest]

I'm trying to make a tutorial video with screen captured avi's. When I put
them into MM2 it stretches it out so it is incomprehensable. I'd like it to
scale nicely if it can. What I did in the mean time is to make all my
recordings 640 x 480 to match the output. It seems to work ok but most of my
videos are washed out. I want to put this video on the web and I'd like to
know what is the best option to save it and still look good for screen
captured avi's. I'd also like to know how to manually set the resolution (my
video area is actually 450 x 620).

 

[Rehan]

For Movie Maker you need to maintain the size and aspect ratio of your
captured screen recordings. 640x480 is the right choice. Make sure you use
the appropriate output video profile when saving the video. May be you can
capture in 640x480 size but place a black/white border around the video
using my bordering plugin: PIP Plus.
http://www.rehanfx.org/pipplus.htm

I would guess that the the washing out is actually in the original video...
indicating that you are loosing the color resolution due to low bitrate of
the recorded video using the screen codec. Screen codec is very low bit rate
codec. If you are using Windows Media Encoder then change the codec in the
Properties to say professional with higher bitrate.

If the washing out happens when you save in Windows Movie maker then change
the output bitrate...
In the Save Movie wizard, first screen allows you to select a name for
the saved movie and the next screen is "Movie Settings". Click on "Show
more options..." and you will have all the different options to select.
Be sure not to select those profiles that save in non-square pixels such as
those containing (NTSC) or (PAL) in their name: "Video for Local Play back
2.1 Mbps (NTSC)". Instead use the equivalent "Video for Local Play back 2.1
Mbps" without NTSC/PAL option.

Another choice would be to make your own custom output profile with higher
bitrate and quality.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/expert/customprofile.mspx
However this may produce very large video size inappropriate for the web.