Down-convert and re-frame

[ehbowen]

This past year I purchased a Retroscan Universal for scanning old 8mm home movies. I've been scanning the films at 720p, but with the camera backed out far enough that I capture essentially all the image in the frame, including the sprocket holes.

I'm now wanting to put together a DVD of our old Christmas movies for my parents. I'd rather not have to re-scan the movies, if I can help it. But I'd like to crop the images for a neater visual presentation, and I'll be going from 720p to 480p as a lot of my other material is captured VHS and 8mm video tapes. Can anyone recommend software for cropping and down-converting the movie scans which is budget-friendly and which doesn't have a steep learning curve (as I'd really like to have this done by Christmas morning)? Suggestions appreciated.

[davexnet]

Give AVStoDVD a try. After the project is set up, you can go into Edit Title settings and set the crop parameters.