Vietnam - A Television History (1983)

Exactly why was America in Vietnam? This remarkable and essential seven-volume series--six years in the making and originally broadcast on public television in 1983--tells the agonizing history of Vietnam's lengthy conflicts with some of the largest powers on Earth. While the primary focus is on the United States' miserable efforts to prop up a porous, anti-Communist government in South Vietnam as a bulwark against Chinese and Soviet expansionism, the series' makers expend no less energy detailing important antecedents to America's intervention. Of vital interest are the first two hours, which tell the compelling story of France's 80-year colonial rule in Southeast Asia and the rise of a European-educated generation of Vietnamese intellectuals turned warriors, chief among them the architect of Vietnam's prolonged revolt against the West, Ho Chi Minh. By the time a viewer comes to understand how and why America shrugged off Vietnamese independence after World War II, it is easier to grasp the tragic context for the disastrous military campaign of the 1960s and '70s. The rest of the series covers the various expansions of America's war in Vietnam through a succession of presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon, carefully explaining the sundry issues that drove each commander-in-chief to send more money, more troops, and more weapons into a seemingly unwinnable and dubious battle. The later volumes take the story into Laos and the horrible siege of Cambodia by a U.S.-supported Khmer Rouge, and examine the history of the antiwar movement in America. No stone is left unturned in this important project, which runs some 13 hours and should be considered one of the most important television series in history. --Tom Keogh

Here's the MediaInfo output for ep 1, the rest used similar settings:
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 351 MiB
Duration : 59mn 49s
Overall bit rate : 820 Kbps
Writing application : VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.2 (build 2540/release)
Writing library : VirtualDubMod build 2540/release

Video
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Streaming Video@L1
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default
Codec ID : XVID
Codec ID/Hint : XviD
Duration : 59mn 49s
Bit rate : 720 Kbps
Width : 512 pixels
Height : 384 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4/3
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.153
Stream size : 308 MiB (88%)
Writing library : XviD 50

Audio
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Codec ID : 55
Codec ID/Hint : MP3
Duration : 59mn 49s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 87.8 Kbps
Minimum bit rate : 32.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 1 channel
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 37.6 MiB (11%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 24 ms (0.58 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 334 ms
Writing library : LAME3.95
Encoding settings : VBR (rh)

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