I've been reading everything I could find, both on wrong field order and pal to NTSC conversion, and I'm convinced that my inability to get great dvds of my VHS’ of home movies is due to problems understanding both. I’ve been a big fan of this site since I first started capturing tapes to my hdd, and learned everything I know here. First, my setup:

Windows XP
Intel Pent IV CPU
512 ram
120 Gb HDD
Wintv PCR capture card
dvd+r/rw recording drive
Apex & Sony standalone dvd players

When I capture I use vdub sync; encode tmpgenc+; tda author; burn tda or recordnow max.

When I first authored/burned I used sonic mydvd, but since discovering tda author I’ve noticed a huge improvement in clarity. With Sonic my dvds were hardly as clear as vhs’. But I think this might vary depending on the computer.

Anyway, as I said I’ve been working with my home videos on ntsc hi8, and on ntsc and pal vhs, since I’d lived for a few years in Europe. I’ve noticed recently that I seem to be getting interlacing artifacts (ghosting and jerky video during motion) on some, but not all, of the ntsc and pal captures. It’s very frustrating, since I just recently started noticing that when I load the avi into tmpgenc wizard, the field order is judged sometimes as bottom, and other times as top! Added to that the fact that I just realized that I shouldn’t transfer pal to ntsc without changing the framerate, I am totally lost. Of course, this isn’t evident ‘til I’ve burned the coaster. I’m not sure if my problem lies in wrong field order or framerate conversion or both!

As a test, I’ve tried capturing the same scene from a pal vhs with top field order, bottom field order and other different settings, and the results don’t look any different from each other. I haven’t done framerate conversion yet, but plan to start experimenting this weekend.

My questions are varied:

1. are interlacing artifacts and jerky video from pal to ntsc conversion visually similar? Could I be mistaking one for the other?

2. if I capture vhs to avi via virtualdub, is the resulting file now de-interlaced and/or progressive (since it is now digitized)? Since my source is analog, when I notice the field order judged bottom (b), I’ve been changing it to analog. Elsewhere I’ve read that field order can be judged according to capture card. Talk about confusing!

3. even if I am working with vhs as source, do I convert the 25fps video to 23.976 video “film?”

4. when I capture ntsc tv from my capture card, then encode/author/burn, I never have a field order problem. How come it “happens” with the home movies?

5. am I right in assuming that to framerate convert I don’t need to create .d2v files and run them through avisynth if my source is captured avi? My plan is to load the captured pal avi in tmpgenc+ and change the framerate to 23.976 and check the do not frame rate convert as outlined in baldrick’s post https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=189264.