SVCD question - need guidance

[djboricua]

I'm trying to create a home movie with transitions, music, and titles from several VHS-C tapes I have (capturing directly from VHS-C cam, to ATI Radeon 64 ViVo). I'm planning to use MediaStudio Pro to edit the video. Should I capture the video to .AVI at 480x480 for NTSC, encode to MPEG2 at 480x480, and then edit the different clips in MediaStudio? If so, why does the video looks stretched when viewing it? Or, when encoding to MPEG2, should I keep the same format (480x480), or should I change it to 352x480? Hope someone can help and shine some light my way.

[xed]

I use Ulead Media Studio Pro and create SVCDs, so I have a little experience in this area.
As ageneral rule of thumb, you should capture at the same resolution you intend to encode to. Thus if you intend to encode to 480 x 480 resolution (SVCD) you should capture at that resolution...IF YOU CAN.
Your setup probably allows you to capture at that resolution. Mine doesn't. My setup is fixed at a capture of 720 x 480, and encoding to 280 x 480 works just fine. However, I capture to 5:1 compressed DV. You are probably not capturing at such a high data rate.
The reason your picture looks squashed is that your computer video playback defaults to 640 x 480 so your computer DV codec distorts the picture because it does not expect to be playing a 480 x 480 file.
However, not to worry -- tabletop DVD players automatically compensate and produce a picture with the correct aspect ratio. So you should be fine if you capture at 480 x 480 and encode to 480 x 480 -- IF you intend to view your SVCDs on a tabletop DVD player.
If you intend to view your SVCDs on a computer, then you'll want to get DVD viewing software like WinDVD or PowerDVD. If you play your SVCDs through that kind of specialized DVD-player software isntead of through the standard Microsucks Windows Media Player, your SVCDs should look fine even on your computer. (NO squashed picture.)
Make sure you capture your video at a high enough data rate for your SVCDs. I typically encode SVCDs at between 3 and 5 mbits/sec, and I can tell very little difference between such SVCD and DVDs made frm the exact same captured video.
This suggests that your ATI Radeon should use a capture setting of at least 3 to 5 mbits/sec if you want to get the best possible video quality on your SVCD.

[djboricua]

Thanks for your quick response XED! I understand now the distortion issue. But, what do you mean when you said to encode at 3 to 5 mbits/sec? Is that a setting when encoding, or it is just based on the capture card and system capabilities? Probable a dumb question, but just want to be sure. Thanks again.

[djboricua]

Once I finish the home movie, what's the best way to copy it back to VHS tape? (this is for some family that does not have DVD players, or computers) I figure I create a SVCD and then copy it from the VCD/DVD player to VHS tape, but I'm not sure if this is the best way. Also, what about if you don't have a VCD/DVD player, other than your computer? How can I copy the video to VHS?

Does anyone else have some input?

[djboricua]

Can someone help a newbie???