Mpeg 4 oddities with aura around actors

[Zorrander]

When I encode a movie into h.264 using any encoder I get a lot of instances where actors or other objects seem to have an aura of slightly offcolor pixels around them. This is really noticable in snow (naria) when the characters are moving. I normally use staxrip on the HD-Slow setting and accept all defaults beyond that... but I used to use mencoder and still got the same odd aura. Any ideas?

[foxyshadis]

Screenshot or sample video of the effect, please, and the avisynth script that was generated by staxrip if possible. That will help determine exactly what you mean by halos (which can be a number of different things).

[check]

Chances are the bitrate is too low, a screenshot will confirm this though.