Why is TMPGEnc 2.58 MPEG2 so blocky?

[Gradlock]

I reencoded LOTR using TMPGEnc using 3000avg bitrate and 8000 as the max. I followed all the recommended settings to get the highest possible quality and guess what? The resulting file looked like a low quality porn flick form the web. There were so many macroblocks that the entire movie looked like it had been made using tiles for each part of the movie. I double checked my settings and there was nothing diffent from previous times. I then encoded with CCE and the quality was amazing, it was hard to tell the difference from the original except in very dark scenes where the picture looked a little "dirty", but fine by me. I love TMPGEnc, best encoder ever still in my book but I'm still surprised at the low quality of the resulting m2v file. is this a problem specific to certain versions of TMPGEnc, should I try an earlier version?

[Nogami]

Can you give us any more information on your TMPGEnc settings? When set properly, I've found CCE and TMPGEnc to produce about the same quality output.

N.

[Gradlock]

Well, here they are:
Video Tab::
Size=720 X 480
Aspect Ratio=Whatever the movie is
Frame rate=23.976 (I used pulldown.exe later)
Rate Control Mode=2-pass VBR (3K Avg and 9K Max)
Video Format=NTSC
Encode Mode=Interlace
DC Component Precision=10bits
Motion Precision Seach=Highest Quality

Advanced Tab
I leave this at what TMPGEnc detects

GOP Structure
Number of I Picture in GOP:1
Number of P Picture in GOP:5
Number of B Picture in GOP:2
Output Interval of Sequence Header:1
Max Number of frames in a GOP:1
Detect Scene change
Quantisize Matrix Tab
MPEG Standard

Output YUV Basic Data
Use Floating Point DCT

Since DVD source is as good as it can be I don't use soften block noise. In any case I don't think it would help because they aren't blocks, they're meteors. Any insight into this is appreaciated.

[ronnylov]

You have set max number of frames in a GOP to 1, try change it to 18. I beleive the max for NTSC DVD is 18 and max for PAL DVD is 15. If you set it to 1 you will get one I frame, then a sequence header, one I frame, a sequence header, one I frame and so on. It's not very bitrate effective.

[Gradlock]

Thanks for the tip ronny.