If you use a lot of random sourced video I'd recommend you get
GSpot Codec Information Appliance, it's a great tool that tells you a lot about the clips you're working with - especially the codec.
If you digitized your old VHS stuff to DV just know that is exactly what DV was created for. It was introduced as a kind-of intermediary format to bridge the analog age to the digital.
With captured VHS material, I get the best picture by deinterlacing in After Effects with
FieldsKit Deinterlacer. I'll usually apply an S-Curve to enrich the color (not available in PP 1.5). Than, if there's junk at the top &/or bottom of the frame I will vertically center the frame (in increments of 2-pixels) than mask the junk. I will also horizontally center if necessary.
I'm not sure why you'd get different results viewing in QT, between a Mac & a PC. What codec are you using?
As far as DVD Video, DVD quality should be pretty close to what you see while editing. You shouldn't re-render. Your export from Premiere should be your final file. Whether you use Adobe Media Encoder or Main Concept MPEG Pro, start with the presets than boost encoding quality to maximum.
Your authoring software should never transcode your MPEG file, as long as it's encoding meets the specifications of your authoring software.
Basically, maybe you need to do two renders. One for DVD Video, than another desktop video.
I'd keep working on making a good DVD render. It does take a bit of experimentation to find the right settings for your needs.
Regarding the use of square-pixel stills, you should resample them to match the aspect ratio of your project. Here's a link to some template files.
Here
At the bottom of the page there are two files that will help you to correctly resample stills to 4:3 and 16:9. Also, there is a vignette file that you could use to mask the signal noise on analog captures, you would just layer the vignette on top of the captured VHS and apply the Multiply Key (I think).
Maybe take a look at this thread...
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/205/871306#871306
It covers a good bit of DVD quality issues.
Vince
