I've been working on our wedding video for about a year, off and on. Along the way, I usually scrap what I have, because I learn something new.

I've been trying to figure things out on my own, but I'm reaching the end of my rope. Although I found some answers by searching these forums, I still have a few questions.

I am capturing using an ATI AIW Radeon card. My first question deals with interlacing. At whateverX240, interlacing does not occur, correct? Anything over 240 becomes an interlaced signal.

Is the signal coming in interlaced from the S-video jack, or is this something that the capture card does?

I can get rid of the interlacing by using a filter in VirtualDub, but a ghost effect remains. This defeats the purpose of using a higher resolution. I tried experimenting with the different deinterlace settings. None of them are what I'm looking for.

My second question deals with color loss. If I can't do anything about the interlacing, then I would be satisfied to use 320X240 resolution.

I don't believe my card supports RGB capture, so I have to use either UYUV, or YUV2. No matter what I try, all of my avi captures end up using 16bit color. I don't really know what I'm talking about here, so please forgive me if I ask some redundant questions.

The initial color loss is okay, but I lose a lot, when I recompress. The huffyuv codec usually results in choppy video, although the color is preserved pretty good. Encoding with Divx turns everything green. I also lose color quality, when I try encoding to rgb (post capture).

After recompressing and editing out some footage, I plan on using a final format of mpeg2. I lose even more color, here.

I guess I'm asking what a good combination of capture, and post capture codecs would be. My primary concerns are color loss and picture sharpness. My process is as follows: Capture --> Edit/encode --> Final encode of project to mpeg2.

One final question. Is DV an interlaced signal? Eventually, I plan to get a DV camera.