Resize video 640x480 after capturing and processing?
 

I've been lurking on here for several weeks, reading though old posts and learning what I can. I've been mainly focusing on the capturing process. From what I've read, it seems like the best capture resolution for most analog NTSC sources such as VHS tapes and video8 or Hi8 8mm tapes is 720x480. However, the aspect ratio is then off by a slight bit, making the video appear wider than the original source material. At some point, after I'm done with any post-capture cleanup, wouldn't I want to re-size my video to 640x480 to preserve the 4:3 aspect ration of the original source?

Thanks.

SAR = storage aspect ratio
DAR = display aspect ratio
AR = aspect ratio, and is used without knowing what it refers to (unless context)

Rectangle pixels
Square pixels

720x480 is rectanlge.
640x480 is square.

DVD-Video, DV, and most analog captures capture 720x480 because it is the SAR

DVD-Video MPEG2 SAR is 720x480 rectangle pixels, and DAR is 4x3 720x480. Pixels are rectangles, not square. The MPEG has playback flags.

Lossless AVI has no flags, but it's also meant only as editing format, not watching.

The ONLY reason to convert 720x480 to 640x480 is for streaming sites (like Youtube) because computers/websites are too stupid to understand either SAR or DAR. It treats all pixels as square. Only players like VLC, with MPEG/etc source, will playback as 4x3 when rectangle.

So the question is, what are you doing?

Well, for now, I'm just trying to digitize everything before my tapes deteriorate. Eventually, I will probably try to make some DVDs to share with family, but I also want to store them digitally on my computer and to be able to share on Facebook, etc. I'm talking about maybe 10 VHS tapes, about 25 video8 8mm tapes, and about 15 miniDV tapes.

You're making DVDs, so 720x480 (or 704x480 or 352x480). There's no option here.

If you share videos on Facebook, save/export/encode a new copy as 640x480, deinterlaced, and preferably with overscan masked (not cropped).