I have a very practical attitude: if the output video quality is good (both on PC and TV) and audio is not out of sync, why wondering if pulldown is needed?
I am really not an expert of PAL to NTSC conversion, but, according to HCenc, pulldown is to be used only when going from 23.976 to 29.97 and not from 25 to 29.97.
Maybe some Doom9 NTSC gurus may help us....
Bye
________
Honda CD125