VHS tapes, Hauppauge capture cards, interlacing, and Sony Vegas Pro 9

[othersteve]

Hey guys,

As much as I feel like I should know about video, I must just really suck at this stuff. I am trying to transfer some old VHS tapes of basketball games to DVD for a friend/customer, and I've pretty much got the process licked... except for the tricky interlacing issue. Here's what I'm doing (and I realize this probably is not ideal to begin with):

1) VCR via RCA -> S-Video adapter to S-Video In on back of Hauppauge HVR-1600.
2) WinTV 7 set to record from S-Video input to .ts files. (Heh, I couldn't get Vegas capture to work with the card.)
3) .ts files imported into Vegas, set to Upper Field First (I actually chose "match media"); no deinterlacing selected.
4) Sent through a Neat Video filter plug-in and then rendered out to MPEG-2 DVD format (480i), lower field first interlacing of course.

Problem is, the video is jumpy and goofy-looking, and you can definitely see signs of interlacing throughout. What in the world am I doing wrong?

Thanks very much in advance.

Steve

[jagabo]

If your source is upper field first why are you encoding lower field first?

[othersteve]

I thought DVD video required lower field first format in order to be fully compliant?

(Feel free at any point to inform me that I've no idea what I'm talking about)

[2Bdecided]

No, either is 100% fully compliant and fully supported (and FWIW TFF is more common).

It's DV that's BFF only.

Cheers,
David.

[othersteve]

I love this place already.

OK, so I've tried going TFF -> TFF... here are the results I am coming up with:

http://www.slickboards.net/media/dal...-uk-1-test.mpg

Does this look normal to you guys, or is something still amiss?

Thank you again, immensely!

Steve

[jagabo]

You resized the video vertically at some point and this has caused cross contamination of the two fields. My guess is you removed the head switching noise at the bottom of the frame. Mask the noise with a black bar rather than cropping and resizing.

[othersteve]

You guys are absolutely amazing. Now the video looks fantastic.

I owe you one!

Steve