480 Captures to SVCD all suck

Every test was bad. Only a 640 capture that gets better resized in Premiere looks smooth.
Here are the specs:
Virtual Dub was used to capture with for both sized tests. Custom format was used to select 480 x 480. Huffyuv 2.1.1 was the compressor.
The video was a Hi-8mm tape of a walk on across the screen. (TV looked pretty good but this tape really shows what is going on.) The camera was on a tripod.
It didn't matter if RGB was selected in Huffy or if Direct Draw overlay was on or off or even or odd. It didn't matter if TMPGEnc motion estimation was very slow, fast or very fast.
Every 480 capture was jerkey to the extream.

Interesting thing seen was that 480 frames in TMPGEnc were sharp and clear while 640 ones showed blurring.

[snowmoon]

Ok let's try and clear this up.

capturing at 480x480 produced non-smooth motion and capturing at 640x480 produced smooth motion? I don't doubt the work you have done, but that does not make sense from a mpeg-2 point of view.

If capturing from a video camera you must first make sure you have 2 things set. You must have interlacing enabled and you must have the right field order. Premeire often de-interlaced video so that would make sense that it wouldbe smooth since neither interlaced or field order would matter ( you lost half the image anyways ).

What is your capture card and software? Are you positive you are capturing INTERLACED?

Well, VirtualDub has no place to set or even see what is set regarding field dominance or interlace.
I have a NTSC tv card, AIW-ATI 128 Pro 32MB and that has never been a problem. Whenever I DO see the settings they are interlaced and A first, as in SVCD settings.
Capture is not through Primiere. I used to deinterlace for VCD output so I know where to do that a couple ways.
As far as I know I AM capturing interlaced. The 480 and the 640 capture files both play as is. So its gotta be right. Encoding is a SVCD template that has interlaced and A first in TMPGEnc.

It seems that the extra information in a 640 capture is transferred during better resizing to the new 480 file and that makes the motion smooth.

Does that make sence?

I would like to capture in 480 direct or even mpeg-2 for that matter but none of my attempts have ever worked for SVCD burning. They play nicely off the PC though.

[snowmoon]

Interlacing can be clearly seen in the .avi file. Double check.

640x480 -> SVCD encoding should be no more smooth than 480x480 -> SVCD encoding so no it does not make sense. Have you ever tried field order B?

Yes I do relize that .avi's really have no way of tracking field dominence it's a real PITA for video people like myself.

The 640 file does not get encoded to SVCD.
The 640 file is resized down to 480 in Premiere.
The new 480 file is encoded to SVCD.

[patrickm]

the resizing down is what gives a 'smoother' picture, not smoother motion. when you resize anything that isn't an integer multiple, you have to resample (e.g., 4 pixels -> 3 pixels), and that always smooths sharp edges off. you lose some detail in this process though, it's like a poor man's noise reduction

Finally got it to work.
A 480 capture did play correctly.
B was chosen in TMPGEnc instead of A and that did the trick, Just like I was told, finally sunk in, and I tried it.

480 captures do not suck.

"A" first does.