Just a note to anyone experimenting with different capture programs.

I've been testing a variety of programs and methodologies - basically, direct-to-MPEG2, and direct-to-AVI (followed by TMPG->MPEG2). I've downloaded and tried winVCR, iuVCR, VirtualVCR, VDub, etc.

All of a sudden, I noticed that, when I played back an MPEG2 file using ATI file player, it no longer honored the 'aspect ratio' setting of the stream.

I've been capturing AVIs at 480x480, which is the exact resolution for US SVCD. When I encode this file in TMPG, using standard SVCD profile, it correctly sets the aspect ratio at 4:3, so even though the image is 480x480, the output displays correctly. Such files played fine in WinDVD, ATI File player, and on my standalone DVD player.

Then I installed WinVCR. I very quickly gave up on it (demo was too limited in capture duration to do any kind of quality test) so I uninstalled it, but chose NOT to uninstall objects 'potentially no longer used' in the WinNT\system...' folder, since I've been burned by doing such things in the past. Anyway, after doing this, when I played by MPEG2 files in ATI File Player, they now display as 1:1 (480x480). WinDVD still correctly displays them as 4:3, and my standalone still correctly displays them. Windows Media Player also incorrectly displays them at 1:1.

I did a complete re-apply of ALL Win2k service packs/patches; all my ATI drivers; etc. No change. FINALLY, I re-installed WinVCR, then removed it, this time saying YES to removing all shared components in the winNT folder structure ... and my problem immediately disappeared! So now my 480x480 captures correctly display as 4:3 (640x480) in file player.

So beware - WinVCR seems to install some 'bad' shared dll or similar that affects other programs. Why it affects ATI File Player, and WMP, but not WinDVD, I don't know but that's what I saw!.