tape resolution???

[disastermaster]

Hi, I`ve got some old video footage on Vhsc tape and 8mm tape, I`m capturing to avi and then encoding to mpeg1 or/and mpeg2. Then I was going to burn them to Dvd as an xdvd. But what res do I do the initial capture? What is the actual res of vhsc/8mm and is it a waste of time capturing above that res.?
Cheers.

ps if I was capturing Live tv thru a tv card and going to put that onto dvd as above what would be the best res for that?

[Tommyknocker]

The prevailing wisdom is to capture as high a resolution as your video capture card drivers and hard drive space will allow, regardless of the source.

[snowmoon]

That's open to debate. Max resolution ( in ditial terms since analog doesn't have a resoltution ) is approximatly 352x480 for VHS for B&W info and about 150x480 for color. Broadcast is somewhere in the vicinty of 480x480.

I always capture at the highest possible resolution so that I can NR and then downconvert. Some poeple find just capturing and encoding at the lower resolution ok. The higher resolution capture helps me to better do NR without killing the image.

BTW: MPEG-2 352x480 with 48khz sound is a legal DVD resolution and should work on all players.