NTSC or NTSCfilm?

[69moons]

In the all in one guide to converting a DIVX file to VCD, it states that if your source has a framerate of 23.976 then you should load the NTSCfilm template when using TMPGEnc. Is this right??? Because it seems that if I do that, the resulting VCD doesn't play right on my standalone DVD player (Apex AD-1500). After a couple of bad VCDs, I tried using just the NTSC template instead and it seems to work just fine. But it makes me wonder if I'm losing quality or doing something wrong or leaving something out that I shouldn't be. What's going on here? Is it just me or does anyone else out there know what I'm talking about? Any clarifications would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[adam]

While 23.976fps (ntscfilm) is a supported framerate in the vcd standard, it is not totally supported by all hardware players. Your dvd player is supposed to detect the different framerate and do a real time telecine to 29.97fps as the movie plays. My Apex AD600a has no problem doing this but I suppose your Apex may. There really isn't anything you can do about it except encode to ntsc like you did. Yes you are losing quality, about %20 to be exact.

You may want to encode to mpeg2 instead and make an xsvcd. Mpeg2 supports something called the 3:2 pulldown which instructs your dvd player to do the telecine and it seems to be supported on nearly every svcd compatible dvd player. The reason I say to make an xsvcd is because raising the resolution to the svcd compliant 480x480 is not recommended. Try keeping it at 352x240 and see if it works, it does on my Apex.