4:3i to 16:9i anamorphic conversion!
 

Well I finally figured out how to convert between letterboxed and anamorphic formats without screwing up the interlacing. Now I can make DVDs that have both widescreen and standard aspect ratios available that look great both ways!

Here's how:
1/load 43 clip into Virtualdub 1.60 beta.
2/deinterlace using "unfold fields side by side" option and crop the input of this filter so that 64lines are taken off the top and 56 lines are taken off the bottom (you could go 60/60, but panning up slightly looks a little better).
3/This will give you two side by side half hight images at dimentions of 1440 by 180. Resize this using highest quality bicubic resizing to 1440 by 240.
4/fold the two halves together using the deinterlace filter's "fold side by side fields together" option.
5/save as an avi file (using the free Panasonic DV codec if you want to save space).

Voila, perfect interpolated interlaced anamorphic footage!

Watch out though: if you burn this to DVD and play it back on a 4/3 TV and a DVD player set up for non-widescreen output, the DVD player will deinterlace your footage as it letterboxes it, the same as it does with interlaced footage actually shot in 16:9. The footage looks great though on a real widescreen monitor with the DVD player set up for 16:9 output!

What I'm doing is setting up DVDs where you can choose either standard or widescreen playback. On either type of TV the image will fill the screen and look terrific. If you choose the widescreen option on a regular TV, the footage will have deinterlacing blur exactly like the DVD release of "Supersize Me".

To my eyes at least, the results of this process looks better than the fake anamorphic mode on my VX2000, and I love having the flexibility to output video in both aspect ratios!

Sony Vegas is the video editing software I use. I just found out that the new "Ultimate S" Vegas scripting plugin does perfect quality 3:4 to anamorphic conversions in one step without extra rendering! That is the way I'm going to do this from now on. It basically does the same thing as the Sony or Panasonic cameras do with their "stretch" widescreen modes!