x264 MKV's Look Horrible on New TV

[sneaker_ger]

Originally Posted by QuantumRand

Just out of curiosity, is there anything inherently bad about Target Average Bitrate encoding, other than it taking a long time?

No, two pass encoding is totally fine. Single pass ABR on the other hand has lower quality than CRF and two pass.

Originally Posted by QuantumRand

Plus from what I've seen, turbo first-pass didn't have that huge of an effect on file size.

What else did you expect? ABR (both single and two pass) aims for a defined bitrate, so not having "that huge of an effect on file size" is totally meaningless in these modes.

Originally Posted by QuantumRand

I've found that a 720p backup with an ABR around 5000kbps gives a pretty consistent ~2.2GB/hour.

Again: what else did you expect?
1h * 5000 kbit/s = 60s*60*5000kbit/s = 18,000,000 kbit ~= 2.2 GB

Originally Posted by QuantumRand

And at 5000kbps, you can use the Normal preset and Turbo First-Pass and still get the same file size while still maintaining essentially transparent quality as you would with 16CRF. Turbo First-Pass, Normal preset takes like 25% longer than CRF16 on VerySlow but you get the same quality results. The file size is typically larger, but always consistent.

Frankly put, you're not making any sense. Don't use fast first pass if you only want to do only a single pass, use a faster preset instead.