Capture from vcr? Interlaced?

[rdad]

Hey guys,

Quick question. I have some VHS tapes and I want to move the video to SVCD. The VHS tapes contain movies I made with my sony camcorder. I want to get the best quality SVCD possible so I want to store content as progressive video. My question is this:

1) Being that I was using an American version camcorder: Are my VHS tapes recorded in interlaced mode? Or does all VHS tapes record in Progressive mode?

2) If I connect my vcr to the capture card, will my vcr send interlaced movies (signals) to the capture card? If so, is there a way that I can send progressive movies to the card?

2b) Even if the VCR feed is interlaced, will/can the capture card record the interlaced movie feed into progressive mode?

3) What resolution should I capture at? Can some one tell me the benefits of capturing at 702 x 480 as opposed to 480 x 480? Which resolution will make my VHS movies look better when I play back on a progressive scan TV?

[circleking]

#1 - All standard VHS tapes NTSC & PAL output interlaced video.

#2 - VCR will send interlaced signal to capture card always.

#2b - Depending on capture software you can select non-interlace or interlace. VirtualDub has non-interlace filtre that can make it progressive. Or when you encode like with TMPEG encoder, it has selection for non-interlace also. If you are going to play SVCD in DVD player and output to TV, keep signal interlaced.

#3 - SVCD resolution is usually supposed to be 480x480 NTSC (480x576 PAL). VHS will not be any better at any SVCD resolution because VHS resolution is bad to begin with. You might be better off to capture to VCD resolution (352x240 NTSC) because you can get more on disc that way, and resolution is about the same as VHS. Sometimes if you use SuperVHS (SVHS) quality is not too bad and capture to SVCD resolution would be the right thing to do.

[rdad]

Thanks for the info circle king.

I have one last question: When you watch a DVD using a progressive DVD player connected to a progressive scan TV, is it the DVD that is encoded in progressive mode? Or is it the DVD player that takes the interlaced signals and convert them to progressive scan?

Thanks in advance for any replies.