Deinterlacing video for DVD burns?

[gangstaj8]

O.K. I've recently been testing programs and settings for capturing video from a VCR in order to burn to DVD. This is, of course, in order to play on a standard DVD player hooked up to a standard T.V. I've finally gotten what seems to be a pretty good system that keeps as much quality as can be expected from VHS, but I have two questions.

One, using VDubMod to capture the video, when I import into Premiere I notice that the video is in square pixels, so I set all the other settings to square pixels. But NTSC is 0.9 pixel aspect ratio, isn't it? Do I have to worry about this, or will my DVD burning software take care of it? And if I should fix this from the get-go, how would I change the settings in VDubMod to capture with 0.9 pixel aspect ratio?

Two, pertaining to export settings of edited video from Premiere, I was setting the the cropping in the special processing when I noticed the deinterlace option. I tested it, noticing a slight increase in quality. But when I burn this to DVD in order to play it on a regular T.V., will it help, hinder, or make no difference whatsoever to the quality of what I'm actually viewing? I'm thinking it won't really matter when viewed on a regular T.V., but might be better quality when viewed on a progressive scan T.V., given that the DVD player is playing a progressive signal. Is this a proper assumption, or am I way off base?

I'm using VDubMod to capture an analog signal to an .AVI file using HuffYUV. Importing that file into Premiere 6 LE for editing, then exporting to an .AVI also using HuffYUV. Then importing the edited file into NeroVisionExpress, where it will be converted to an MPEG2, and burned to DVD. So far I've been testing the quality of the final outcome by burning an image to the HDD and playing it in WMP. Everything looks fine to me, but if there's something I should be doing to improve the quality even further, any helpful suggestions will be gratefully appreciated.

[Scintilla]

One, using VDubMod to capture the video, when I import into Premiere I notice that the video is in square pixels, so I set all the other settings to square pixels. But NTSC is 0.9 pixel aspect ratio, isn't it? Do I have to worry about this, or will my DVD burning software take care of it? And if I should fix this from the get-go, how would I change the settings in VDubMod to capture with 0.9 pixel aspect ratio?

What's your resolution? If it's 720x480, then you should be fine (and it shouldn't matter whether you choose to edit it in Premiere as square pixels or 0.9, just as long as the clips' settings match the project settings).
And if you keep it 720x480 all the way through, then your DVD burning software should handle things fine (I think some programs might not even accept many other resolutions (I'm looking at you, Adobe Encore DVD)). Either you'll set the 4:3 aspect ratio flag when you encode the MPEG-2 version, or your DVD burning software will do it when it transcodes to MPEG-2 if you don't do it yourself.

Two, pertaining to export settings of edited video from Premiere, I was setting the the cropping in the special processing when I noticed the deinterlace option. I tested it, noticing a slight increase in quality. But when I burn this to DVD in order to play it on a regular T.V., will it help, hinder, or make no difference whatsoever to the quality of what I'm actually viewing? I'm thinking it won't really matter when viewed on a regular T.V., but might be better quality when viewed on a progressive scan T.V., given that the DVD player is playing a progressive signal. Is this a proper assumption, or am I way off base?

Assuming the deinterlacing doesn't make the video look significantly worse, then yes, that's a proper assumption... except that Premiere's deinterlacer sucks and you're much better off using one of AVISynth's (or VirtualDub's?) deinterlacing alternatives.

[gangstaj8]

What's your resolution?

Oh yeah, I knew I forgot something, and that now seems to be a whole topic on it's own. I've been working with 320x240 because it seems that's the largerst VDubMod will let me use. I'm assuming the fault lies with my cheap capture card, but the error is "Error 418: Unsupported video format". I wasn't worrying about it because when I get my final MPEG2 encoded VOB's (720x480), they look just fine. I can't see any visible cropping, shrinking or stretching. BTW, Nero automatically transcodes it into the 720x480, there aren't any ways to adjust it, that I've found anyway. But fortunately, it seems to be able to import most file types and sizes.

After looking through VDubMod's capture settings again, I saw some that come close to multiplying near to 720x480, but not exact. Like 176x144, which is a quarter of 704x576, or 240x180 is a third of 720x540. I haven't played around with these yet, so I'm not sure if they would make much of a difference. Like I mentioned, I'm not displeased with the final results, but any thoughts?

except that Premiere's deinterlacer sucks and you're much better off using one of AVISynth's (or VirtualDub's?) deinterlacing alternatives.

That's good to know, especially since mines an older version. I'll use VDub's built-in since I'm not using a script, I'm sure the results will be fine.

Thanks very much for your input Scintilla. It helps me very much to bat around these piddling issues with someone who has a clue, because I sometimes don't...

[Keeper of Hellfire]

Since you source is a VCR the aspect ratio is 4:3, so capturing in 320x240 with square pixels is ok. But I wouldn't let Nero do the resize to 720 x 480, I'd use VDub to do it, with either the Lanczos resize or the bicubic resize. Make some tests what looks better with your source.

I'll use VDub's built-in since I'm not using a script, I'm sure the results will be fine.

The built in "deinterlace" of VDub isn't good either. Try some of the external filters, like SmoothDeinterlace, SmartDeinterlace, area based and so on.

[Willen]

Two, pertaining to export settings of edited video from Premiere, I was setting the the cropping in the special processing when I noticed the deinterlace option. I tested it, noticing a slight increase in quality. But when I burn this to DVD in order to play it on a regular T.V., will it help, hinder, or make no difference whatsoever to the quality of what I'm actually viewing? I'm thinking it won't really matter when viewed on a regular T.V., but might be better quality when viewed on a progressive scan T.V., given that the DVD player is playing a progressive signal. Is this a proper assumption, or am I way off base?

Well, officially, the video on a DVD is recorded as interlaced, even from progressive sources. They are just flagged as progressive and a progressive-scan player or computer playback program can recreate the progressive frames. See here: DVD FAQ sec. 1.40 and here: DVD FAQ 3.4.

But you are right. With the proper setup, your video if done correctly, can look better as progressive. Plus, for editing, progressive video is preferred.

[gangstaj8]

But I wouldn't let Nero do the resize to 720 x 480, I'd use VDub to do it, with either the Lanczos resize or the bicubic resize... The built in "deinterlace" of VDub isn't good either. Try some of the external filters, like SmoothDeinterlace, SmartDeinterlace, area based and so on.

Ah, good thinking, thanks for pointing that out. Everything is looking even better now!

...See here: DVD FAQ sec. 1.40 and here: DVD FAQ 3.4.

Oh wow, my head is swimming... Maybe if I keep bashing my head against the screen some of that info will eventually osmose. Good info though, I am hoping to actually own an HD T.V. one of these days. So atleast I can look forward to the hope that what I'm doing now will produce higher quality pictures on a higher quality screen down the road.

Thanks all for your help.