Converting DV to ???. Which format? Aspect ratio problems.

Question

I'm trying to digitize some old VHS videos for archival and I need some guidance. My goal is to keep a digital copy on disk and toss out the tapes with the player. Most of the videos will just be for future viewing, not further editing. I tossed out the TV a few years ago and I hope to never go back, so my primary viewing will likely be on a computer screen. If I do get another TV someday I imagine that I would play these videos with some sort of media center type device rather than a DVD so I may need to keep that in mind when deciding upon the final format.
I'm using a Canopus ADVC-300 to convert the videos to DV streams. I use iMovie HD 6 to capture the DV input. A few months ago I converted a few tapes with iMovie 08 and learned the hard way about the DV quality problems designed into that product. Anyway, the Canopus feeds my Mac a standard 720x480 DV stream. In iMovie I start a new project and tell it the video format is DV, as opposed to DV Widescreen.
Up to this point everything is working great.
My dilemma is how to save the video. I want a format that has good quality and will not likely need any future transcoding to stay usable. Thus far from iMovie HD I've been sharing to Quicktime, selecting Expert Settings, and then playing around with the various options within "Movie to Quicktime Movie".
On the video settings panel I'm going under the assumption that H.264 is the preferred choice. I set the compressor quality to high, the encoding to multi-pass, and the data rate to automatic.
The video filter panel has nothing selected for now.
The video size panel is where I start having questions. Obviously the original video sources have a 4:3 aspect ratio. If I leave the dimensions as "current" (720x480) I get a video that plays at 3:2 in every player I've tried. I guess that seems obvious even though I told iMovie I was working with a 4:3 project. My player of choice is VLC and I can tell it to show the video at 4:3 but it's a pain to do that every time. Quicktime can do that too, and in fact you can save the aspect ratio with the video so that it will display that way each time, but I never really use QT unless I have to.
Looking at the list of available choices in the dimension drop down box, it looks like there are a couple possible solutions...
The most obvious choice is "NTSC 720x480 4:3". When this option is used the video is 4:3 by default when played by QT. However, it still shows up as 3:2 in VLC, mplayer, and also when played via Frontrow. I downloaded mplayer just for this comparison and I never watch videos using Frontrow but I suppose I might someday if that media center thing comes into play. Once again I can tell VLC to show it as 4:3 but doing so every time is annoying. There doesn't seem to be any way to adjust the aspect ratio from within Frontrow so that's a non-starter. I'm thinking this might technically be the correct format to use but none of the players other than QT recognize the anamorphic setting (is that right?). When I look at the video properties in QT it shows 720x480(640x480) but the other tools show just 720x480.
The next obvious choice in the list of dimensions is "640x480 VGA". When I use this option I do in fact get a video that displays correctly in every player. However, I can't help but wonder if I'm losing resolution this way. I think it's just converting the rectangular pixels to square pixels but with the drop in horizontal pixels there must be less information there? Is this a viable format for playing on various devices in the future?
Should I be experimenting with something other an "Movie to Quicktime Movie" and H.264?
In all cases I've selected to deinterlace the video. Some might say that VHS is of such poor quality to begin with that using such high settings is a waste. I say that the source video is bad enough that there's no room to add even more degradation. I'm willing to live with data rates that will push 1-2 GB per hour of video. I think that's probably plenty to keep the video quality as good as can be considering the source. I'm just not sure which format is best for this purpose. It's a one-shot deal, once the conversion is done the tapes get thrown away so I'm a little anxious about making the right choice.

Answer 1

When choosing Export -> QuickTime Movie, you get a self-contained QuickTime-file of your sequence. The default video format is the same as your current sequence settings, which means you will get the exact same frame size an pixel aspect ratio in your QuickTime-file.
The best thing would be to use Compressor, but first you need to tell us what you are going to do with your QuickTime movie. Is it supposed to be a copy for the web? What video format do you need/want your movie to be exported in?
To letterbox your video in a 4:3 frame size, read about padding in the Compressor User Manual.