althor1138 said:

I am planning on using HCenc 0.25 for encoding to mpeg2 unless I find something better. Do I understand correctly that if I give it a file at 23.976 fps it is going to convert it to 29.97fps anyway before it encodes? If this is the case I'm thinking that I shouldn't Decimate the original 29.97fps file down to 23.976 and just encode it as it is. Thoughts?

You can encode it with the ntsc_film framerate (23.976fps) after IVTCing. This allows you to use a higher bitrate because you're not wasting space on duplicated fields.

Your DVD player will do the pulldown in this case. NTSC GOUT is encoded this way.