Capturing widescreen VHS?

[justin81]

I have a "workprint" of a film on NTSC VHS. When played on a CRT, the black bars are on the top and bottom on the screen. The image itself doesn't appear distorted or unnaturally stretched. Should I capture this as 4:3, or would there be a reason to use another setting such as 16:9?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that a VCR's output was always 4:3 (even from S-Video?) and these type of widescreen films on VHS were using an open matte or similar type approach to basically display widescreen on a 4:3 display.

Thanks in advance.

[jagabo]

The VCR output is 4:3. The picture just has black bars top and bottom. Capture as 4:3.

[usually_quiet]

VHS did not use 16:9 anamorphic widescreen like DVD. As jagabo said, all VHS is technically 4:3 aspect ratio, so the black bars are part of the VHS picture, and you need to capture as 4:3. Just use an HDTV's zoom function to watch your captures. If you crop them, resize and re-encode as anamorphic 16:9 widescreen, you will loose a little quality.

[jmac698]

That being said, if you purposely record anamorphic content to VHS it looks a lot better on playback. There were a very few laserdiscs that were anamorphic.
But no need to encode as anamorphic, just 640x272 or whatever.
VHS HI-FI sound is quite good. To make the most of this project, match the colors to the theatrical release copy on DVD, with histogram matching plugin. Take the sound from VHS. Even edit in DVD sections.