Has anybody here had any success with authoring a 16:9 anamorphic, MPEG2 NTSC Film, 3:2 pulldown on playback (23.976 fps encoded, 29.97 fps on playback) with AC3 audio onto DVD? I have been trying for the last month and can't get anywhere with it.

The source video is a progressive encoded AVI divx file at 25 FPS. The AVI has been checked for errors using the VirtualDub and DivxFix utilities. TMPGEnc was used with the "do not conversion" option, 3:2 pulldown on playback and 23.976 fps selected. The final m2v (or mpeg when muxed) file has the correct number of frames and is the right length timewise (including the adjustment going from 25 to 23.976 fps). The resulting m2v file plays correctly in wmp 9.0 and PowerDVD. The audio file has been stretched to match the new video time. The m2v file has been verified in DVD2AVI and BitRate Viewer for the correct pulldown settings.

When I author the DVD and create a titleset on the harddrive, it mostly plays fine but jumps/freezes up every now and then during playback using PowerDVD. The final movie length is also 8 seconds shorter than it should be. I've read posts here indicating a problem with the TMPGEnc/PowerDVD combination but I haven't been able to get other MPEG encoders to work correctly. BBMpeg gets part way through the movie and gets stuck in a loop while encoding.

The following authoring tools have been tried along with their results.
DVD Complete: Doesn't support AC3 audio.
Sonic MyDVD: Only supports PCM audio.
IFO Edit: Annoying NTSC 3:2 pulldown software bug that's been discussed here plenty of times prevents me from using IFO Edit.
MF2: No AC3 audio support.
SpruceUp: Doesn't seem to support NTSC 3:2 pulldown. Final video length is 8 seconds shorter in length and freezes up every now and then. SpruceUp also rejects movies muxed with BBMpeg for some reason.

I've also tried the above using different encoders (bbmpeg, tmpgenc), different muxers (bbmpeg, tmpgenc and the ones used with the authoring tools) and using pulldown.exe to apply the 2:3 pulldown flags with no success. VirtualDub has also been used to provide the 25 fps to 23.976 framerate conversion instead of TMPGEnc with no success. I've also tried using VirtualDub as a frameserver to send the uncompressed frames directly to TMPGEnc. The results are always the same...

My question is there any sub $150 DVD authoring package that works successfully with 16:9 anamorphic, NTSC Film 23.976 fps with 3:2 pulldown on playback and AC3 audio? If so, I need the name of the package along with the name/settings of the MPEG encoder it works with. Using TMPGEnc would be preferred but at this point I'll switch to anything else. It would also be fine if the authoring package only supported 4:3 video because I could change the encoded flags using other utilities.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Dan