I have almost similar client wants to do the same (MiniDV tapes recordings of her family life, her baby's video)). The final target is media file, for playback in FlashDisk, media player.

The best option I have is to render it to Internet MP4 480p templates, but with higher bit rates, around 3 to 4 Mbps.

Set

Thanks for the replies.

When I set to progressive I got the feeling it was the wrong thing to do but couldn't think why. Cheers for that, HappyFriar.

I'm currently rendering to Mainconcept MPEG-2 keeping the default settings.

I'll then do as suggested by set and see how each work out both in size and quality. The only thing is with set's option that the original is 720x576 so, surely, reducing the size will reduce quality somewhat?

Edit: Just as an aside the original is 4:3

Handbrake is designed to do this.

and removing interlacing will result in 1/2 the data being thrown away

I only "half" agree. You could actually re-render to 50p instead of 25p. I have not done this with DVD material but I have done it many times with HDV 50i and Vegas does a good job when deinterlacing is set to "interpolate" and smart resampling is on. I waated to have my HDV footage on a BD at 1280x720 50p and it looked really good. I gues this all could be done in HB too, maybe even better. This all only makes sense of your TV can playback 50p.

If interlaced is OK then you can't do any better than concatenate the main VOB files and rename the extension to MPG. No re-render and no loss of quality.

Concatenation can be done using the COPY /B command, but it is a bit tedious, but not too bad if you are only doing one DVD. If you have many, you may prefer to use a program like VOB2MPG.

The only thing is with set's option that the original is 720x576 so, surely, reducing the size will reduce quality somewhat?
> It's true, it will reduce the resolution to 640x480, anyway, mine is just a quick solution only, as I have to keep it simple. If we need to keep the resolution, MPEG2-interlace is still the much preferred... I can't comment about upscaling it to at least 720p and make higher frame rate to 50p from interlace original.

The other way you may can do it, but this method will only be playable in PC, make your discs as ISO image file. I'm using Imgburn, then with VLC media player from Videolan.org, drag ISO image to the player.

Set

"[I]...several family event DVDs... DVDs don't always play well now.[/I]"

I appreciate your willingness to help your mother connect with her past. Here's another approach based on a different definition of the problem. If the DVDs don't play well now, the disks and/or the DVD player are probably failing. Disks "rot", get scratched and get unreliable over time. I've also found all optical disk players to have a finite life span.

If your mother can use a DVD player, she likely understands the user interface but may be reluctant to adapt to a different player.

A Completely Lossless Proposal:

Buy your mother a new optical player but this time get a Blu-ray player.

Get the video off the old DVDs as quickly as you can, especially if these are the only source of the video.

Combine the VOBs per DVD image.

Demux the VOBs to separate video and audio.

Create a new Blu-ray project in DVD Architect with all the DVDs on one Blu-ray.

Give your mother all the video on one Blu-ray disk and keep an iso.

If you still want to pursue playing as files, put your output on a USB flash drive, plug it into the Blu-ray player and play from there.

the original is 4:3

Sorry, I missed that. But, you can bring the 4:3 VOB file(s) into Vegas in a 1280x720 50p project but don't let it get cropped to fill the screen or resized in any way, let it maintain the original 4:3 (720x576). Put a track below and insert a solid black generated media over the full length of the project. The idea of buying a new BD players is a very good one too. Render it out to a Blu-Ray 50p template and burn a BD with all the movies and a "shiny" menu to select from. I did that with all my old D8 PAL tapes and a few Hi8 that I had. The result is actually amazingly good and I can't see any loses at all. If you don't want to make a BD, frame serve to Handbrake which will give a stunning mp4 file with a PAR of 1.

Sorry for possibly being the fly in the soup here but why not just copy the DVDs to new DVDs? The old ones are failing because the wrong brand was used. Stick with Verbatim or TY and they will outlive you.

We discussed saving memories on flash memory a few weeks ago. I still can't get my head around the idea. Would much rather have a shiny disk where I can print nice graphics on one side, and it's physically large enough that it won't be easily lost.

But maybe it's just me.

riredale

"[I]why not just copy the DVDs to new DVDs[/I]

Na... that's too easy. ;-)

If you are going to copy a disintegrating media DVD to a new DVD - which can be successful, then you need to be sure you are following best recovery and QA tech.
1) Make sure to test the old DVD stability with an error check on several different PC hardware players. ( Nero Ahead software has the error check app). Find the hardware that performs the best playback cycle with the least error count. This is also known commonly as verifying media id compatibility with a given hardware/firmware.
2) Once the best player is found- then use this DVD writer to write your next copy DVD with modern media.
3) BUT, don't do a direct copy - instead use software to rebuild the iso image (Nero) to the harddrive of the PC first - then the rebuilt iso gets burned to the copy DVD