Understanding video ratios

I see videos in different ratios and although I believe that the higher the numbers are, the better quality the video is, I do not know if this is true, or whether there are some rules to guide me in knowing which videos to download.

So, I see, for example, 640 x 480 all the time. But is 720 x 576, or 768 x 400, better or worse quality than 640 x 480? What is the 1st and 2nd figure about and is it their relationship that determines or contributes to the quality of the video?

What should I go by or look for?

Any help appreciated.

Video bitrate is important too
So if you have 640x480 and 1280x720 videos, both with same bitrate (1024 Kbps for example) - the first one (640x480) will look better.
If you can't find video bitrate info in post text - look at the video info on thumbnails.

But usually, if we talk about modern videos which wasn't re-encoded by poster - yes, the higher the numbers are, the better quality the video is

Nucky wrote:

Thanks for your reply.

Where would the bitrate be located in a thumbnail? Do I choose "get info" after clicking on a video file? if so, what do I look for after the info panel opens up? If not, where do I look for this info.

I also have another question in the same area.

Sometimes, I have 2 copies of the same video, with the same duration & aspect ratio (i.e. 640x480).
But one of the files can be bigger in file size than the other. Playing the videos side by side shows them to be of the same quality.

Can you tell me why one video would be bigger in file size than the other?

lupo12 wrote:

It depends how the video was encoded a 480p ver well encoded will look better than a 720p poorly encoded. When you encode a video, there is always loss of quality everything depends on the encoding parameters. To encode in good quality you need a lot of processing power and time.

I have 2 of the same videos with the exact same duration.

One is 960x540, 3.62GB and has a bitrate of 3.52MBit/s.
The other is 1920x1080, 3.28GB and has a bitrate of 3.19 MBit/s.

They look very close to each other quality wise, by the naked eye, but without watching both videos side by side for some time, which one would you keep if you had the choice?

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silverjuke.net/public/misc/bitrate-calculator.html