What's the best software to use for this conversion? Or should I convert to 24fps and see if my dvd player will play a 24fps DVD correctly (if my authoring program let's me make a 24fps DVD)?

I'm trying to get the best quality possible. (The last thing I'll do with my mp4, once it's in NTSC format, is load it into my dvd authoring program which doesn't do good PAL to NTSC conversion by itself, but it will convert mp4 to DVD format just fine)

Thanks for any help

ahh, I discovered that I can burn a NSTC DVD in 23.976 FPS.

my problem, which I obviously didn't describe very well, was frame rate conversion. every time I tried going up from 23.976 to 29.97 the results looked like crap. I thought that the software I was using must have a terrible conversion algorithm.

that's why I was trying to convert my mp4's framerate before I loaded it into my authoring program (which butchers the video during frame rate conversion).

but now that I know that I can burn a dvd using 23.976 fps my problem is solved.

I can't believe it took me this long to figure that out. I was all over the internet researching different frame rate conversion algorithms and different software.