Matrices Question

[EpheMeroN]

Are there any matrices tailored for high-motion / sporting events?

[EpheMeroN]

Or are there any matrices that help in the reduction of macroblocking?

I know the rule of thumb is to give more bitrate but I have 4000avg and 9000max and I am still getting blocks on these encodes.

[kolak]

Matrixes are not important with CCE, because it changes it by itself for each GOP. If you do more than 1 pass than CCE will changed matrixes for each GOP to get the best possible quality.
You can avoid that and use your own matrice by enableing "Disable Adaptive Q-Matrix switching".
If you have macrobloking set Low pass filter stronger (4 Mhz) and enable more vertical filtering. Use as high as possible bitrate.

If you do encoding for DVD it can happen that you won't be able to avoid macroblocking, because bitrate limitations:)
It happens very often when source is not good quality and very hihg motion.