VHS->DV->DVD (WS) advice needed

[Dragonsf]

As my new TV is capable of displaying WS, I just wondered, if it would be better to encode the DVD as WS or let the DVD player decode to WS (using the Zoom).

The idea: capture the VHS footage to DV, crop the borders and resize anamorphic back to DV framesize. The encoding process will of course use the correct aspect ratio flag.

What will be the best result (qualitywise)?

[guns1inger]

Personally, I believe you will get better results this was, as the digital zoom on most players is poor quality. I would look at applying (carefully) an unsharp mask after the resize to get some of the clarity back.

It might be worth doing a couple of minutes using both methods to compare.

[Dragonsf]

You're right. I checked the zoom functionality and it's worse, compared to the chip's upscaling ability. Of course, small pieces on DVD RW are good for testing.

[Dragonsf]

Ok, I eventually made the test. Best results were achieved by cropping everything unwanted, LanczosReseize to original framesize and thus yielding an anamorphic frame. Converting (with 16:6 as aspect ratio) to mpeg-2 and burned to DVD. Much better quality than just zoom.