User guide

RESOLUTION V. ASPECT RATIO
Resolution is how the video world describes the number of pixels
(the tiny dots of color that make up an image) in each dimension
(height and width) of the image being displayed. If the resolution of
a video is written as 720x480, for example, this means the images of
the video are made up of rows containing 720 pixels across (from left
to right) and columns containing 480 pixels from top to bottom.
In standard definition video, there are two different standards for
resolutions: NTSC and PAL. These standards originated in the
broadcast television days, so they naturally carried over into the
beginning of the digital video era. When applied to a standard
definition DVD, a NTSC video would have a resolution of 720 x 480
pixels and a PAL video would have 720 x576 pixels. In both cases,
the resulting aspect ratio could be 4:3 or 16:9... More on that later.
Digital video standards came together around the same time as the
rise of high definition television and video, so the old PAL and NTSC
systems were able to better synchronize their standards. In high
definition video, the standard resolutions are 720p (1280 x 720 pixels)
and 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels). In HD video resolutions, the aspect
ratio is 16:9, or widescreen.
DivX 10
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DivX, LLC User Guide