HDTV to DVD conversion - advice?

[MarkGrigsby]

I have some 720p 60fps HDTV material, and want to convert it to a DVD-complient format. I'm pretty sure it was originally recorded on film, so I guess a lot of the 60 fps are duplicated for broadcast (it comes from a US broadcast).

Can someone please suggest the best quality way to do this? It seems the simplest would be to halve the frame-count (e.g. SelectEven in AviSynth), resize to 720x480, and encode as NTSC. But wouldn't PAL offer a better quality at 720x576?

I'm relatively new to this, so all help MUCH appreciated!

[edDV]

First read this to understand the frame repeat sequence* for 24fps film to get to 60 frames per second. You ideally would like to do the reverse before converting to 25 or 30 fps.

http://www.dvdfile.com/news/special_report/production_a_z/3_2_pulldown.htm
This covers 480p but the concept is similar.

*in summary, entire frames are repeated in a 3:2 pattern. If you chop every other frame, you will be introducing temporal jitter.

[MarkGrigsby]

Thanks. I understand that, but the question I really want help with is how to deal with the resulting 24fps. As the resolution is 1280x720, I presume I'll end up in a better conversion by downscaling to PAL instead of NTSC - does this make sense?

[edDV]

If the TV will be PAL or dual standard that is true. Most EDTVs worldwide usually have enough native vertical lines for 720x576 but not all are dual standard.

If you are in a PAL country, PAL is best. If in a NTSC country,you would need both a dual standard TV and DVD player to play PAL DVDs.

[gsh]

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I have a very similar question.
I have an MPEG2 from a US broadcast resolution 1280x720, 59.94 fps, 25000kbps. I want to put it onto a DVD so that the whole image is displayed correctly on both regular 4:3 and WS TV. The only tool I have at my disposal is TMPGEnc Plus 2.5, which I think should do the job. I am however at a loss as to which settings I use to accomplish this (and enabling me to use the original 5.1 audio).
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks