I'm starting with is an mpeg-2 capture of a VHS taped UK widescreen (16:9) PAL television broadcast. It was made with a Dazzle DVC-2 using the SVCD template. The PAL SVCDs I've made from this look quite good.

What I'm trying to do is create an SVCD that a friend of mine in the US can view on an NTSC television. The DVD player to be used for playback is a Pioneer DV-343.

I've tried using TMPGEnc 2.01 to encode a 4:3 NTSC version from the source mpeg-2, but the quality degradation is too high. I've tried cleaning it up using a lot of the recommendations in this forum, but the results are still pretty bad (motion problems, extra block noise, audio sync issues, etc).

How can I create a high quality result? What I'd also like to achieve is to:

1. Change the 16:9 to 4:3 by cropping the sides (most of the extra picture in 16:9 UK broadcasts is not that important)
2. Fill the screen of an NTSC television without the bottom of the picture being cut off.

I'm not sure of the DV-343's ability to play back PAL SVCDs on NTSC televisions, but the few times I've tried playing PAL discs on NTSC tv, the extra lines at the bottom of PAL broadcast were not there. I don't have an NTSC tv to work with, so trial and error isn't really possible.

Any help will be much appreciated.