thorr said:

I just realized that this is already in quasi-HD (basically anamorphic HD, like how DVD's work, but more resolution)! You captured this at a vertical resolution of 480. If you do a horizontal stretch to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, this comes to 1128x480. You aren't adding any horizontal resolution, but you are gaining vertical resolution compared to DVD.

PLEASE, pretty please with sugar on top, convert this to an HD format and not just stick with DVD. It is debatable if you should convert it to a standard resolution like 1280x720p in which case the picture area would be 1280x545 because you are upscaling the vertical a bit which might introduce artifacts. Either way (1128x480 or 1280x545) would be a drastic improvement over 720x306.

Here is a sample pic:

http://i53.tinypic.com/343rxvp.jpg

This sounds like a good way to go. So now I have some questions...

In the past, I would use the anamorphic flag to have the player stretch the video horizontally. So, not having worked with HD video before, is it the case that HD video doesn't use such a flag?

And if that's the case, then the entire horizontal stretch is done in software? Any suggested tools that would do the best job at that?