Resizing (downsizing)

So, I did get around to playing with resizing filters.
I tested downsizing from 1080p to 480p in CCE SP2. (with AviSynth scripts)

I find the Spline filters to be the best for Spline (as does most other people).
I used to like spline16 a lot, it did well. No halos, no artifacts, no blockiness, no ringing.
Well, not as much as other resize filters produce.
Spline32 was okay. But I find it actually produced some ringing in brightly colored CG movies (like the opening scene in Rio, the sun and the fade from black to a blue sky was just too... apparent onscreen).
Spline64 gives a clearer and sharper image, much sharper than the earlier splines. And the coloring came in richer and nicer. Virtually the same as spline16 but with more sharpness and clarity.

Altogether I stopped worrying about spline32 and never looked back.

I find spline16 to be too smooth and soft. A little blurry on movies that look naturally soft (opening scene to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone).
I find spline64 to really keeps the artistic effect for movies that intentionally use film grain (like Canadian-French film Martyrs).

On other forums (like doom9), there'll be people who say the more "taps" (taps are the numbers, 16, 32, 64) you use, the longer your encode takes.
False.
The only thing that affects the encoding time is how well you're computer is setup: processor (single core vs multi-core), processor speed, ram, your hard drive speed (52000 rpm is said to be more efficient than 72000 rpm as the blocks in 52000 are smaller and will read/write much faster than 72's much larger blocks; 72000 is said to be best used in a computer designed to be a server), your graphics card memory and lastly if you're computer is defragged and you've customized your programs and services so that it does not interfere too much with your encoding program.

This is just downscaling. I have yet to play with upscaling.
Although, I don't really see a point in upscaling anything. I always believe you should downscale from a larger (proper) resolution/bitrate than to upscale anything.
If you can't find the quality you want, and can only find a smaller resolution/bitrate, it's best not to do anything to it and keep it in its original state.

I just might not bother with upscaling and stick with Lanczos4 if absolutely needed.


In short: Spline64 wins my heart :)
(for now).

Spline64Resize(h, w)

Coming soon: screenshots?
More work on VC-1 in Sony Vegas.
I just might convert to x264 and import as an MP4 file.
Granted, this causes quality loss. But desperate times call for desperate measures.