hello I have 2 PAL mpeg2 movie files (extracted from svcd source) and want to put them onto 1 NTSC DVD-R. the bitrate on these files are currently 2000. I tried the conversion with TMPGEnc and only change i made was to up the bitrate to 2500 - more of a standard i assume for SVCD. Then followed the guides to put a SVCD on to DVDr without re-encoding.
ntsc svcd on dvdr works great for me, very happy with results, its the pal>ntsc conversion that is killing me on this one.
the resulting mpeg from the pal>ntsc conversion was sub-par. I was wondering if I'd be better off converting to a straight DVD mpeg (720x480) and if so should I set the bitrate to as high as I can get it? since the source is only 2000, didn't know if i'd be wasting my time setting it to 8000 or something.

do you know if I can use Panasonic, CCE, Canopus, or MainConcept to do a mpeg to mpeg conversion? from their web pages it seems they only want avi as input? have access to these from work and have read that others prefer their quality over TMPGEnc. any opinions on which one produces the best results? have not been thrilled with my results with tmpgenc and wouldn't mind trying something else.

thank you for any feedback!!