Weird output when editing video in VirtualDub?
 

I've been trying this out on a few tapes and I can't figure this out for the life of me. A friend of mine wants these tapes converted to dvd. He doesn't care about quality or anything just simply 1:1 copy or well "1:1" for those who know what they're talking about.

I crop out a few lines of digital garbage from the bottom and my dvds always come out overly cropped and interlaced even tho I didn't select that? I'm using tmpgenc dvd author 3 and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong (well besides the crap my friend knows is "better") I attached examples

Edit - hm should probably note that the first pic is before any cropping, the 2nd one is after it but I didn't crop it like that I promise lol. If you look back to pic 1 I simply cropped where the digital garbage is

DVD is 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL). DVD can't be 720x540. Not ever. There are only two display aspect ratios allowed for those DVD frame sizes: either 4:3 or 16:9. DVD authoring programs will not accept anything else.

VHS is interlaced. DVD is interlaced or progressive+telecine. Deinterlaced DVD video will almost always have jerky or klutzy motion on playback with most TV's.

Don't crop head-switching noise at the bottom of the frame. Either crop and restore the original frame size by adding borders, or mask the noise with black border in an editor.

Allowed frame sizes and other tech standards for DVD (PAL & NTSC): http://www.videohelp.com/dvd#tech

You're right, quality is most certainly not a factor here. The amount of ugly noise shown in your images will eat up bitrate like a pack of starving hound dogs.

ah I see that makes sense thanks sanlyn, he has a few hi8 tapes as well would this info be the same for hi8 tapes being interlaced?

Hi8 is like VHS. It's almost always interlaced. You can capture at 720x480/720x576 or at 640x480, but the final frame size has to be "to spec" according to the link posted earlier.

There's no "almost". It's interlaced, period.

As stated, mask (cover with black), never crop (cut pixels off).

VLC can give you a false result, sometimes. Always test "problem" videos with MPC as well. See if they agree.

That source image isn't terrible. It can be cleaned up without too much effort. All it needs are some VirtualDub filters. A slight temporal NR and a CCD (Camcorder Color Denoise) would do wonders for it. I'm working on a similar video myself. But this client cares about quality!