AmaRecTV capture appears squished compared to WinDV?
 

I'm using a JVC SR-VS30 and USB-Live2 capture device to digitize some old family VHS tapes. I've setup AmaRecTV using this link and using the Lagarith codec:
https://aaproductions.net/amarectv.htm

I also captured a test segment from the VHS using the firewire port and WinDV. The WinDV capture looks brighter and taller, while the AmaRecTV capture is darker and shorter, looking a little squished.

I don't have another capture device to test, so I don't really have anything else to compare to.

In the screenshot, the video on the left is AmaRecTV and the right is WinDV. VirtualDub also gave the same results as AmaRecTV.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong here? Is the resolution for DV different, so the video is being stretched vertically?

What is probably going on here is that they are both captured at a resolution of 720x480, which by itself is not 4:3 but 3:2 and the WinDV output has a flag in place to display the .avi file in it's correct 4:3 aspect ratio. The Amarec/Virtualdub captured avis do not have this flag and are meant to be set in place afterwards.

As a test, you could resize the Amarec output to 640x480 with an output PAR of 1:1, or instead crop it to 704x480 and save it with an output PAR of 8:9. Either one should look the same as the WinDV capture when it comes to the width of everything

That's my site. I don't mention it here because Lordsmurf hates AmarecTV with a passion. :wink2:

I think the issue is only the way it is being displayed by MPV. DV files have the proper display aspect ratio embedded, so they properly display at 4:3.

On the other hand, analogue AVIs such as most captures normally don't have the display aspect ratio embedded, so the player doesn't know how to display them.

I think the DV image is correct, the LAGS image is stretched.

I'm not familiar with MPV, but you can check what a file really looks like in VDub: open it and then on the video itself, right-click and choose 4:3. This will display the video in 4:3, and you should find it will look very similar to the DV version.

Ayarei beat me to it.