VHS>DVD>Custom DVD

[NotSoEasy]

So I'm looking for any type of guidance on making the best of what I have.
I have an old VHS tape of Howie Mandel - Howie From Maui Live that I wanted to store on DVD.I can do this via my DVD recorder but i would like to do a nice custom DVD rather than what I get from the recorder.I also need to trim a few things like the few frames that have PLAY as well as some nasty tracking lines that take place in the very beginning.

How should I go about doing this?
I have ripped the DVD with DVDFab Decrypter.From this point I am not sure what steps I should take to edit what I want ( all the clean up ) also do I crop the black areas I get on the sides ?
I want to use DVD-Lab Pro 2 to make my menu and final product.So I guess I just need to know what to do in the middle here.

Image attached is actual size and for the purpose of seeing the black areas I asked about cropping.Cyberlink DVD took the caps at 720x536
The RED area is just to separate the images.

[guns1inger]

Simple things first.

1. Don't crop the black. Two reasons - the first being you won't see them on your TV anyway, as they are in the overscan area. The second being that if you do, you will then have to re-encode everything. Unnecessary rick to quality IMO.

2. You can do cropping with no or minimal re-encoding using a good mpeg editor. For simple crops, VideoRedo is very good. For more extensive editing, Womble Mpeg Wizard is better suited. Both will only re-encode open GOPs, so it will only be a few frames at most.

3. Once you are done, you can either use these programs to demux the mpeg files to elementary streams, or use PGCDemux, then import the results to author in DLP.

[NotSoEasy]

Ok so cropping wont be done on this.I had the feeling I would be told that.
So what about doing the cleaning up up like sharpening, contrast, and any other things that might make this old VHS look a tad better.I assume the software you listed will do this?
Also the issue of removing the unwanted frames like the first image you see.

Thanks for the help

[guns1inger]

Editing out frames you don't want is best done in one of the editors I mentioned. VideoRedo is similar in feel to virtualdub and is good for trimming. Womble Mpeg Wizard is designed more like an NLE in the VideoStudio mold. Either will do what you need without re-encoding.

If the rest of the video is of the same quality as the stills then I probably wouldn't try to do anything else to it. If you must play, virtualdubmpeg2, or even better, avisynth, may help. However either method will required re-encoding, which may negate any clean up you do.

The problem with mpeg2 is that it doesn't re-encode very well, so if I am going to be processing video, mpeg2 is the last format I would want the source in.