I've got a few questions about the settings in TMPG 3.0 Express.

I'm converting AVI files recorded through a Avermedia PCI card. (These are S-VHS videos.) These are going to be watched on a standalone DVD player through a 'regular' interlaced TV.

In the 'Filters-Deinterlace' section, it automatically selects 'DeInterlace only when necessary'. If I select 'Keep-interlaced', I get all sorts of dire warnings.

Since interlaced VHS video should never normally be de-interlaced, is it best to ignore these warnings and always use the 'Keep Interlaced' setting?

Second, in the output section it automatically sets a finished file size of 4200 MB. When I used that as a default and authored with TMPG DVD Author 1.6, the finished DVD only used about 95% capacity of the disc. (I'm only making relatively simple menus in authoring, no motion menus, etc.)

When I encoded my last project, I set the output file size in TMPG 3.0 Express to over 4300 MB, 104% of capacity. I still ended up with a final DVD about 1% short of full capacity.

5% is too much to lose (1% is too little to worry about, I suppose) but it seems odd that I should always have to set the capacity to over 100%.

What should I set the minimum bitrate to, while encoding? It defaults to zero. Should it be padded or ??

Lastly, I have read another thread on this forum about changing the max. bitrate to 9800 (from the normal max of 9200), by going into the 'Advanced MPEG' settings and making a slightly out of spec DVD. I tried this once and the resulting DVD did play fine, but has anybody else tried this? Does it even make a difference?

Thanks for any help you can give me.