Best quality telecine method for 23.976 -> 29.97fps

[DRP]

Normally I only convert downloaded 23.976fps videos to PAL because that's much easier for me and PAL is my native format anyway, but I have one downloaded video here which for a very specific reason I need to play in NTSC format.

As I don't normally do this conversion, I want to know the best way of doing this introducing as little juddering and stumbles as possible. I figure these are the options I have at my disposal:

1) Encode with TMPGenc as 23.976 with a pull-down flag and let the DVD player deal with telecining it on playback

2) Encode with TMPGEnc at 29.97 letting TMPGEnc perform the telecine on encoding

3) Get AviSynth to do a pulldown on the source and frameserve output into TMPGEnc for encoding at 29.97

Of those methods, which is most likely to produce a the smoothest output?

The video was downloaded, but I know it would have been IVTC from the source to create the AVI. The source would definitely have been 29.97 to begin with. I have no idea what software or IVTC method was used to create the AVI.

[jagabo]

1.

[DRP]

Ta. Just one question. I've done it as recommended but I've ended up with an m2v file which is now too big to fit on the disc. I admit that I don't really know what I've done wrong here.

In TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 I thought encoding with a pulldown flag was no more complicated than selecting 3:2 pulldown when playback as the encode mode and then selecting 23.976fps (internally 29.97fps) as the frame rate.

That's what I did, but it appears to have encoded it as 29.97 and what's more it's encoded at an average bitrate of 2450kbps when I entered 1960kbps as the desired average bitrate. What have I done wrong?

[jagabo]

In TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 I thought encoding with a pulldown flag was no more complicated than selecting 3:2 pulldown when playback as the encode mode and then selecting 23.976fps (internally 29.97fps) as the frame rate.

Yes, that is the correct procedure -- assuming your source is 23.976 fps.

That's what I did, but it appears to have encoded it as 29.97

Many programs will report 23.976 progressive with 3:2 pulldown flags as 29.97 fps. Open your video in GSpot. It will tell you the pics/s (23.076), frames/s (29.97) and fields/s (59.94).

and what's more it's encoded at an average bitrate of 2450kbps when I entered 1960kbps as the desired average bitrate. What have I done wrong?

At the extremes TMPGEnc sometimes misses the mark in terms of bitrate, especially with CBR encoding. 1960 kbps is pretty low if you are working with full D1 (720x480) video. 2-pass VBR encoding usually works better. Both in terms of picture quality and hitting the requested bitrate. You may want to drop down to half D1 (352x480) resolution at that low a bitrate.