Basic question about interlaced bottom/top first, progressive for US NTSC ?

[tmh]

OK, I know lots of info here on this, believe me I've looked and am now more confused. I have made DVDs from camcorder DV footage and photos for years and at one time understood the proper encoding settings. but I had them as defaults in my software, then just bought a new Movie Edit pro 11 Plus that is sold in the UK and I am in the US so the defaults are not what I need. Alas, I need to have a refresher course.

So, DV and jpg edited then encoded to DVD compliant mpeg2. This is for DVD playback from standalone player to TV. I select MTSC 720 x 480. NOW I have 3 choices....1. Interlaced Bottom Field first; 2. Interlaced TOP field First, or 3. Progressive. I then set the bitrate, etc. which I know how to do.

So, which should I select? Does it matter what player it will be shown on (US only)? Also, I do show some of the videos via projector from my laptop, so would I encode the same way for that or better to use a different choice? I use Power DVD and a few other players.

[freebird73717]

If your encoding DV then use interlaced bottom field first.

[thecoalman]

Depends on the source, if your source is a DV device then as mentioned its bottom filed first. Here's old thread with more deatail:

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic257631.html

[Alex_ander]

Also depends on your encoder: if it allows for independent input/output field order settings (like CCE), then it is possible to make a TFF encoding from a BBF video like your DV (most commercial DVDs are encoded TFF). With CCE you anyway do these settings manually.
In other cases it is more safe to select the same output field order as that of your source (BFF for DV). If your encoder reads the field order of imported video automatically, it is useful to check whether it shows it correctly.