Is my VHS(C) source Interlaced?

[shred]

I own a JVC C-VHS camcorder.

When I capture at 480 lines I see what looks like interlacing/combing effect in high motion frames when viewed on my PC. I don't see the lines when capturing at 240.

I have read EVERYWHERE that VHS is no greater than 240 lines of resolution to begin with. I've read at some places that it is actually only 210 lines. If this is the case, then why do I see what looks like interlacing when I capture 480 lines.

I've looked at several web sites that explain interlacing, and I think I have a pretty good handle on the whole concept.

It should also be noted that my source (C-VHS camcorder) and destination (Sony Trinitron TV) are both NTSC, so from what I understand, telecineing does not apply to me.

I have also read (here and other places) that it is always better to capture at the highest possible resolution, then resize down and convert to preserve the highest possible quality. But I honestly do not see any difference (when viewed on TV) between the same clip captured at 320x240 or 640x480. In both cases I converted to mpg2 (and resized to 480x480) using TMPGEnc with "Motion search precision" set to "High quality (slow)".

Thanks

[sterno]

Your source is interlaced, so it's actually at 60fields/sec (59.94 for you nitpickers). Each field is every other line in the picture. When you capture at a vertical resolution of 480 you're getting both fields for each frame, so the interlacing is visible during motion. If you're going to MPEG-2 you can do the encode as interlaced instead of having to deinterlace it, and it will look just fine on your TV as long as you have the field order correct.

Most people do find that capturing at higher resolutions gives them a better final product, but it probably depends a lot on the source quality. I do see a difference between material captured at low resolution (like 352x240) and high resolution (352x480 or higher), and I always avoid increasing the size.