drngr said:

Video Collector said:

Note that the PALs also look horizontally squeezed compared to the NTSC versions, something we saw on the Ewoks tapes as well.

That's only because PAL DVD stores images at 1.25:1 (NTSC stores them at 1.5:1 so "raw" screenshots of NTSC fullscreen DVDs are stretched instead of squeezed).

I didn't crop off all of the black padding but this approximates how your DVD would look on a TV: http://check2pic.ru/compare/28601/

Probably a combination of that and the mp4 files are only 640 horizontal. All the raw AVI's I worked with are 720, and whenever I get a DVD set together I'll leave them at 720.

We did a couple of experiments around here with a 720x480 MP4 and somebody had issues with their software recognizing the ratio flags. So I figured 640x480 would probably be easiest to disseminate.

MP4 file

My 720x480 processed AVI

VideoCollectors capture

I would say that the downconversion to 640x480 took a little more detail out of the video than I would have liked. But I think it is still doable to keep the file size down and to make them as universally playable as possible.

In the end though, Video Collector's PAL capture still has a little bit of an edge on this video. Maybe something to do with having a PAL native VCR, as opposed to my Universal VCR.