digitalFAQ.com Forum - How to properly crop, resize, encode for DVD usage?

Hi!

I have VHS tapes that have been captured (using lagarith lossless codec) in 720x480 which I understand is a standard resolution for DVD players to read. However, my capture device captures small black bars of different sizes on either side of the video that are about a few pixels wide each that I'd like to get rid of before encoding/compressing and burning to disc.

Would I lose information by cropping, resizing back to 720x480, and then encoding into MPEG2 for a DVD? From my understanding, the horizontal lines will not lose resolution by stretching and shrinking but I may be misunderstanding this. I have also read from various sources that you should de-interlace before resizing interlaced video and then re-interlace after the resize. Is this only true if you resize the vertical axis or is it true for both axes?

I'm using virtualdub to capture and edit, and then either handbrake or avidemux to encode to MPEG2 (I'm not sure which of the two is better, but it seems like avidemux will only let me encode to 4:3 rather than the original 720x480 of the avi file).

Any insight would be greatly appreciated, thanks! :salute: