DVD2AVI vs GSpot & de-interlacing

[Night_Raven]

Oh, joy, the 5 days 'look but don't touch' are over. I can post.
First of all, sorry if this is not the appropriate section for this topic.
Quite some time ago I recorded the Oscars 2004 on a video tape and now I captured it to my PC. Because my hard disk space is a bit of a problem and since the whole broadcast was more than 3 hours I captured at MPEG2 at the highest bitrate possible, and not huffyuv or MJPEG. Question 1: DVD2AVI reports PROGRESSIVE video, while GSpot reports INTERLACED. Which is more trusted? I suppose GSpot should be but still, better safe than sorry.
I ask in order to know if I should de-interlace. Finally, after a lot of browsing in the internet, I came to the conclusion I seem to always arrive to: try for yourself. I cut out a small part of the video file and tried encoding it with and without deinterlacing. Except for some of those blocks due to the compression I noticed no difference between the deinterlaced and non-interlaced video. They both seemed the same as the original MPEG2. The resolution is 768x576. The source is the german Pro7 television (PAL_B). Should I see a difference and if not, should I de-interlace? The file is aimed for viewing mainly on PC.
The second issue: I have two possible ways to go
1) crop out commercials (duh) and then encode using the MPEG version of VirtualDub with some filters
or
2) crop out commercials (duh), use dvd2avi to demux the audio and do all the processing in AviSynth and then mux the audio and video back together via VDub. Of course audio will be compressed. (the dvd to avi way?)
Which of these two choices is better in terms of quality and speed?
I guess #2 should be better but i'm asking just in case.
All those guides and topics confused me instead of making it clear what should be done. That's why I'm asking.
It would also be simply great if someone could suggest a nice chain of filters I should use.

Edit: missing info.

[Boulder]

See the Doom9 capture guide. It contains practically all you need to know about capturing and processing the captures.

[Night_Raven]

I checked it and no, it doesn't. It covers either huffyuv or mjpeg. I use neither.
I'll try to make it simpler:
1) Does an MPEG-2 file captured from VHS at 25.00 fps need deinterlacing? Since i tried a small part of the file and i see no difference between the original MPEG-2, one encoded in XviD and one encoded and de-interlaced? Is it normal not to see difference?
2) Is DivX 3.11 best for VHS captures or should I stick to XviD?
3) DVD2AVI or GSpot are more accurate at determening if a video is progressive or interlaced?

[Boulder]

Processing MPEG2 files is the same as with DVDs. You use DGIndex to create a project file out of the .mpg file and load it with MPEG2Source in your Avisynth script. The rest is exactly the same.

No program can tell you if the material is really interlaced. You need to use your own eyes to determine that - and using the search will provide lots of results as well, it has been discussed a lot in the past.

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome to the forum, Night_Raven.

DGIndex (aka DVD2AVI, the older name for the program) only examines the MPEG-2 flags, not the image. I don't know what GSpot looks at to obtain its information. The only software I'm aware of that analyzes content for you is Auto Gordian Knot. (That software is used to create MPEG-4 AVI files using DivX or XviD codecs.)

As Boulder suggests, you should use your own eyes. You may want to take a look at www.doom9.org/ivtc-tut.htm to see several methodologies for analyzing content manually. The tutorial is out of date --it still uses DVD2AVI rather than the newer DGIndex, for example -- but should still be helpful.

[Night_Raven]

Processing MPEG2 files is the same as with DVDs. You use DGIndex to create a project file out of the .mpg file and load it with MPEG2Source in your Avisynth script. The rest is exactly the same.


So instead of AviSource I use MPEG2Source and everything else is the same?
This is good.
Thanks for the tutorial jggimi, I'll take a look at it for sure.
I still forgot to mention my hardware and the capture software I use.
The capture card is Leadtek TV2000 XP RM. Didn't have money for Expert version. Hope it's decent, the one I have. The capture software is actually the one that came with the card - WinFast PVR.
Since I didn't have enough space for either huffyuv or MJPEG, I had to capture to MPEG2 and the software that did that without problems was its own. I tried custom drivers but only messed things up.
The card is supposed to de-interlace but is that ONLY when viewing or by caputring as well. I can't seem to understand what they mean at their website.