All confused about capture resolution! (VHS>DVD)

[Hugh Jorgan]

OK I read the FAQ on capturing, and the consensus says to capture as high a resolution as possible, then encode down to whatever you want when making VCD, DVD, etc. What I don't understand is, isn't the signal coming out of my VCR in a 4:3 ratio? If I capture in 640X480, the ratio is the same (4:3). But If I capture in 720X480, then it's a 4.5to3 ratio, and the video will be stretched sideways right?

I tried capturing at both these resolutions, and when I converted to mpeg2 using the DVD template in TMPGenc, they both display differently when playing in PowerDVD.
I posted screen captures here:
http://216.119.69.76/capture.html

Am I correct in thinking I should be capturing in 640X480, because it's a 4:3 ratio?

[cjv]

It doesn't matter what you capture in. The bigger the better. MPEG has an aspect ratio flag that tells the player to display it as 4:3 or 16:9 or whatever.

Thus capture in 720x480, and set the aspect ratio flag to 4:3. I don't know about tmpgenc, you might have not set it properly, but it's gotta be in there somewhere. In CCE it's really easy to find. Also, sometimes the aspect ratio flag does not get recognized in .m2v files. Try muxing your file in bbmpeg first to a proper mpeg or authoring it with a DVD app to a vob.

cjv

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

do some more tests and use what ressembles the source
more.....
640 and 720 don't have same pixelAR....