Hello All,

I have been reading the forums here for a few months now and have learned a great deal. This site rocks!!! However, I am still confused by several aspects of the capture/convert/author process. Most of my questions regard conversion so I chose this particular forum. I do some DVD rips, but my main focus is on captured VHS and TV recordings. Here are the specifics:

Dazzle DVC II Capture card
Intel 1.7 GHz w/256MB DRAM and multiple drives

I capture at 720x480 at 8Mbit as I read this was preferred for the Dazzle cards. The work flows is as such:

Capture -> DVD2AVI -> AviSynth -> TMpeg -> TSCV -> Nero

My questions:

1. Some believe FILM frame rates offer better picture quality as each frame has more bitrate than NTSC standard (makes sense to me). When I frame serve the capture MPGs, I have DVD2AVI set to Force Film and the result is 23.96 frames/sec to AviSynth. Does this effectively perform IVTC on the 29.97 source? If not, would I be better off from a quality standpoint just doing IVTC on the 29.97 source?

2. When I encode the 23.96 material in TMpeg, I activate the 3:2 pulldown during playback. Is this correct?

3. Would I be better off capturing at the target frame size (480x480) or (352x480) then 720x480 and resizing? I am interested in quality and resize is a very quick operation.

4. Is the higher starting bitrate (8 MBit) a good idea? I am thinking that I give the encoder more data to work with and hopefully generate a better quality image.

5. When I encode with TMpeg, I use the .d2v file for video, the .mpa file that DVD2AVI has created for the audio and let the encoder do its thing. I have seen many references to using BBMpeg to do the muxing. What is the best method for this? Should I just generate the video in TMpeg and then mux the .mpa with the .m2v or .m1v in BBmpeg? Also, how does one account for the audio delay in BBMpeg? It defaults to 180 for the video and audio. If my audio is set to a delay of -66 msec, do I substract that from the default value of 180 or substitute it?

Thanks for all the help that you all have already imparted.

Cactus Jack