Hey y'all! Long time lurker, first time poster! Basically just have a question regarding recording onto VHS. Long story short I have an interlaced video that I'll be recording from my laptop onto tape and was wondering if it was better to deinterlace said video via virtualdub or handbrake beforehand or if deinterlacing first was the way to go. I usually deinterlace all my VHS capture footage but that's always just for archiving footage, not necessarily dubbing to tape. Thanks!

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Disregard, idk why I didn't think of it before. I recorded 10 seconds of interlaced video and 10 seconds of deinterlaced footage onto a tape and the interlaced stuff looked better. The more ya know lol

Welcome. :)

What is the output device? Something embedded in the laptop?
What software did you use to record out?

I find that a DV converters are a decent bridge, but I'm making mental notes of other methods.

Yes, retaining the interlace is ideal. Methods that force deinterlace are lower quality.

Hey Smurf, thanks!

So my usual workflow is basically record with AmarecTV with an Elgato capture device -> drop that file in Virtualdub -> Neat Video Noise Reduction -> Deinterlace -> levels -> resize to 720x960 -> crop, then bounce that file out to AVI via lagarath codec, then just bounce that file to MP4 via Handbrake.

VHS is inherently interlaced, so you might as well keep it interlaced all the way through, rather than going through an unnecessary de-interlacing and re-interlacing scheme. (Unless you're playing special tricks, like using the two fields to store separate images, such as what the 3D VHS camcorders and Japanese-market "record two programs simultaneously" VCRs did.)