Resolution to capture VHS tapes/TV at

[TheInformer]

The accepted resolution to capture VHS tape or TV broadcasts at is 352x480 (NTSC). This works out well and captures the entire signal from the VHS tape and most all of the broadcast TV signal.

MY CURRENT PROJECT
To convert several swing dance instructional videos from their analog VHS format and to put two tapes at a time (or more, depending) onto 1 DVD-R.

I captured at 352x480 for video and 48000 for sound.

I then ran the raw captured video through VirtualDub, applied a few filters (noise reduction, resizing), and frameserved the video to TMPGEnc for conversion to DVD compliant MPEG-2 files.

TMPGEnc's DVD template specifies 720x480 for DVDs. The vertical resolution isn't any different from the source to the MPEG-2, but when the horizontal resolution is changed to the DVD resolution, it's not an integer multiple.

Hmmm.

I wondered if capturing at 360x480 would give me a better result than 352x480. Would VirtualDub's horizontal resolution resizing work better if the destination size was an integer multiple as opposed to a non-integer multiple?

IMHO it does make a difference! Nothing great, but to me the 360x480s looked better than the 352x480 captures. My theory is that the quality increase is due to VirtualDub's resizing filter working better.

Anyways, I'm still in the middle of this project and have a bit to go before completion. I thought everyone would be interested in this little bit of discovered info though.
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[sammie]

I did a fairly extensive set of experiments a couple of weeks ago. Bottom line is, the bigger the capture size, the better the results (as long as you don't start dropping frames). I didn't try the size you mention, but capturing at 720x480 then resizing back seems to give much better results. I did a fair bit of web searching while I was doing all the encoding. From what I can tell there is in fact quite a bit of video information available at increased capture resolution, especially if you are using a high quality capture setup.

Others noted some artifacts associated with re-sizing. I haven't noted any except some over sharpening with the wrong filter settings.

The thread is here: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=132972&highlight= It also has a great VCD test pattern link showing the impact of increased capture size on final quality.

[rsuave5]

this is a debate that has been posted on these pages almost daily. i always just read them in interest as i have my own system,

i used to cap at 352 x 480 with good results. but i got power vcr ll and my buddy gave me his specs for caps and they are 720 x 480 and a bitrate of 7500 , also tweking some settings and turning on video smoothing (email me if youd like the tweaks)

i now capture my vhs with these specs and they are awesome! (samples available) i also pass my dvd player through my vcr to my computer and capture those and they are grreeeaaat! hardly notice a difference!

so the debate goes on but in my mind the 720 x 480 cap is the way to go! even if im going to convert to vcd

[Bondiablo]

Although the template is 720x480 there's no reason you can't use 352x480 in TMPGEnc for your DVDs.

[sammie]

Yes, definitely resize back if you want to save/make more efficient use of your bitrate. 352x480 is a standard DVD resolution and you can use it directly with several authoring programs.