Maybe you can see here the settings you need to perform a pulldown-flag setting during encoding a 23,97 NTSC FILM Stream.
Its part of a Guide of mine, but its in german so I send you this picture as part of the guide .... maybe its enough to understand.
Only change in TMPEGEnc the Fields with Numbers as shown here.
And do NOT set any other Pulldown options ins the Advanced settings!
This here refers to 23,97 FPS sources only!
You can just do your 23,97 Pulldown configuration as shown above and save it as a KVCD based text-project in TMPEGEnc and open this in CQ Matic - Thats all.
There's also a way in Avisynth to convert 23,97 NTSC to 29,97 NTSC before encoding to mpeg but its senseless, cause the encoder has to handle more picture-information during the encoding process in TMPEGEnc so you would receive less CQ.
Example:
You got a movie with 23,97 @ 480x480
1 Frame= 230400
*23,97= 5522688 pixels p. second
*60 = 331361280 p. p. minute
*100=
33136128000 pixels to handle by encoding a 100 min Video stream
And if you encode with 29,97 @ 480x480
This 100 min Video stream will take
41430528000 when encoding at 29,97 FPS
So this is why you would receive less CQ
(In this case when encoding a full Screen Movie, not a Widescreen! but in Widescreen mode we enjoy in relation the same advantage when encoding using 23,97!)
@ Jellygoose
NTSC FILM = 23,97 FPS / Progressive
NTSC VIDEO= 29,97 FPS / Interlaced
And here comes the hidden trap:
Also NTSC FILM = 23,97 FPS / Progressive / w. Pulldownflag
= Shown at PC as 29,97!

hehe tricky... most blockbuster NTSC DVDs got a 23,97 with Pulldownflag.