On a related video note...

Has anyone ever dealt with source material that's a mix of 4x3 and 16x9?

I am remastering one of our very first DVDs, which someone else edited in the first place (not that I would have caught the problem either at that point...)

There is one scene that is primarily in 16x9, with a b-roll that is 4x3. The existing edit is just a mix of the two, which is extremely distractive/disruptive. So I'm preparing to reassemble everything and am thinking of trimming the 16x9 and slightly enlarging it to be 4x3, so it will match not only with the B-roll but with all the other scenes on the DVD, and then perhaps offering the 16x9 scene (without B-roll) as an added bonus.

I can crop the 16x9 without having to mess with pan-and-scan because of the way it was shot, but there will be a slight decrease in quality because I will have to enlarge it about 20% to fill the 4x3 frame after cropping. Would it be better to have a consistent 4x3 in all scenes with a slight degradation as a result of the enlargement, or would it be better to have one 16x9 scene and a bunch of 4x3 scenes?

You could also crop the 4:3 to 16:9 dimensions and do the whole video in widescreen. That way you won't have the degradation of the main part.

I was thinking about that -- it's a good idea, but I'm afraid the way the other scenes were shot, it won't work well to crop that way... too much of the content is shot close to full frame.

I think I'm going to do a test burn to DVD and take a look at both on somebody's big-screen TV and see how noticeable it is...