Question: 352x240 Up to 480x320 With Best Quality

I'm in Adobe Premiere Pro (Production Studio) and have a bit of a problem:

I have three clips from client in AVI 352x240. She needs the output to be
480x320 NTSC for 4:3 TV (DVD) output. What is the best way to achieve this

Jukka Aho...

I can understand the 352×240 figure, but I don't quite understand the
requirement for 480×320. Could you elaborate a bit and tell where this
target resolution comes from?

Anyhow, 480×320 is not a standard DVD resolution. You can't make the
picture on a DVD exactly that size without adding black borders.

(Just checking: are you aware that 352×240 actually _is_ one of the
standard DVD resolutions? This means that you wouldn't necessarily need
to resize the material at all and it would still nicely fill the entire
screen when played back on a standard DVD player.)

with the smallest loss in overall quality? I have them in three Sequences with
titles and music, but now the smaller size is causing a problem. My suggestion
that the end-user just use the Zoom on the DVD did not fly. I also have
Digital Media Converter, which will recode to 480x320, but with a defininte
loss in image quality. I also suspect that these AVIs may have, at one time,
been compressed via an unknown (to me) MPG process, then converted by client,
or an outside agency, to AVI.

Jukka Aho...

What is the video codec of these AVI files?

noone...

I'll run them through G-Spot and report the CODEC.

Also, the question should read "352x240 Up to 720x480!" Running between too
many computers left me gasping for breath and obviously, need for some oxygen
to my brain!! Sorry for the mistake in format.

noone...

First,

Thanks to Jukka Aho and Ken Maltby for help with this. I have some ideas to
play with and will gauge the results on a monitor to see if one seems better
than another.

Also, from the Adobe PP2 Forum, a suggestion was made to Import into After
Effects and Scale. I'll report on which method(s) yield the better (I now do
not expect a "best") result. As a starter, I did a re-code in Digital Media
Converter 2.7, so I have a "control," for comparison.

Thanks for the suggestions and with helping me with the DVD standards. Sorry
for the false-start vis-a-vis the resolutions though.

Ken Maltby...

That is a big difference. In fact you might want to consider
converting that, to DVD compliant MPEG-1 at that "resolution"
and as progressive video. You can have that display fullscreen
off a DVD, it needn't be resized to 720x480.

MPEG-2 was developed to properly handle analog interlaced
video, and the x480 dimension is part of the specification that
makes that possible. Interlaced video with a smaller than x480
dimension should be de-interlaced and CBR encoded as
progressive MPEG, if it is to be MPEG. (That goes for
MPEG-2 as well.)

If the interlaced video has a x480 or greater dimension then it
should be encoded CBR or VBR as interlaced MPEG-2 video.

If it is progressive video the dimension won't matter to the MPEG
standard, but will to the DVD standard. For DVD compliant
MPEG-1 it need be: progressive, CBR encoded, 4:3, 1.8Mbps
Max Video Bitrate, 352x240NTSC or 352x288PAL.

Luck;
Ken

Is there a Video Effect in APP2 (Production Studio Premium), that I cannot
find in Help/Manual, that will allow this conversion? Are there some other
ways around this problem, that I cannot think of? If this were Pinnacle
Studio, I would just run one of the Pan/Zoom Effects on the footage, to "crop"
into the area on the screen, and live with that loss in quality, but APP2 has
me stumped and I do NOT want to take this into Studio 9.4.3. Help, guys and
gals!