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| hwangste |
| Posted: Sep 27 2002, 02:49 AM |
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Unregistered
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I'm working on my first video editing project with some video that I shot at a wedding. From what I've read online, it sounds like the resolution I should set virtualdub to capture at depends on what I want to do with the captured video. The problem is, I may want to do more than one thing with it. Basically, I'm looking at outputting the edited video back onto a VHS tape and also keeping my options open to make a VCD. So, what resolution would be best for the capture? I know it's probably best to double the vertical resolution to 480 and resize later. What about the horizontal? Should I do 320, or is 352 better because of the possible VCD? If I do 352x480 and squish it down to 352x240, will the result look distorted compared to starting with 320x480 and going to 320x240? |
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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Sep 27 2002, 04:48 AM |
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Administrator n00b
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My advice:
Always capture with vertical resolution = 480 (NTSC), since this gets you both fields. You can then use fancy deinterlacing techniques, IVTC, or produce field-based MPEG-2, but you gotta have both fields.
Yes, your capture resolution should depend on what you want to make the video into. If you want to maximize your options, decide what is the highest resolution you will encode to. Let's say you might want to make an SVCD from your capture, then you should capture at 480 x 480. You can also make VCD from this by rescaling the width to 352 and the height to 240. Let's say you might want to make DVD, then capture at 720 x 480. From this capture you could make SVCD and VCD as well.
Regarding distortion, remember that DVD, SVCD, and VCD pixels are not square. 480 x 480 will look squashed in your capture, but it will look correct on the final SVCD. 720 x 480 and 352 x 240 will also look slightly squashed, but correct on the final disc.
Hope this helps 
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May the FOURCC be with you... |
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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Sep 27 2002, 04:59 AM |
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Administrator n00b
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More advice (after reading your question again):
Let's say you want to record something to AVI, make another videotape from that, and also make a VCD from that. (This sounds more like what you were talking about.) Capture at 640 x 480. Then when you play back the AVI, it won't look squashed on TV. When you make the VCD, rescale to 352 x 240, perhaps with deinterlacing.
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May the FOURCC be with you... |
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| hwangste |
| Posted: Sep 28 2002, 04:25 AM |
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Thanks for the advice- I'm curious, though. Why capture at 640? I can understand the 480 part (I think), but if VHS resolution is supposedly 320x240, and interlacing only affects the vertical resolution, how does capturing at 640 improve the final product? I'm asking this mainly because the video I'm going to capture is roughly an hour long and so the file sizes are going to get pretty big. Worse yet, I actually have two video angles that I need to combine, and so I'll have a total of about two hours of captured video to start working with.
One last thing- if I capture at 640x480, I get interlacing artifacts when I play the clip back on my computer monitor. That much I expected. Will the artifacts still show up when I record back onto videotape? I'd check now, except hauling my VCR up to my computer to hook it up to the TV-out is a royal pain and I'd like to save that for when I've got everything ready to go. |
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| fccHandler |
| Posted: Sep 28 2002, 06:32 AM |
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Administrator n00b
Group: Moderators
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The only reason I said to capture at 640 x 480 was so the aspect ratio would be correct when you played it back on TV (meaning the video wouldn't look squashed).
BTW, who says VHS resolution is 320 x 240? I would argue to death over that statement! 
| QUOTE | | ...I get interlacing artifacts when I play the clip back on my computer monitor...Will the artifacts still show up when I record back onto videotape? |
The answer to that I don't know (sorry). My guess is no (since TV is interlaced anyway), but you'll have to try it and see.
Here's my next advice: Capture at 352 x 480, deinterlace and scale to 352 x 240 (if hard drive space is an issue, capture at 352 x 240). Then make your VCD, and play the VCD in Media Player full-screen while recording to VHS. (Playing it full-screen ensures that the output won't look squashed when you record it.)
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May the FOURCC be with you... |
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