hc and your anime encoding experiences

[rail grinder]

hey all,

i wanna know what's been your experience(s) with encoding anime/animated sources with hc compared to other encoders.

the last time i encoded an anime with hc was back when it was still version 0.14 and it turned out pretty decent. i've since formatted several times since then and have long lost the settings i've used.

earlier in the summer i started encoding again with 0.18 but i had mixed feelings with some quality comparisons to a 9pass CCE 2.7 encode. hc turned out sharper but had trouble with some scenes and had noticable macroblocks (ex. scene with heavy rain), whereas cce had minimal macroblocks but was noticably "softer".

anyways, how well have the rest of you guys/gals done in your anime encodings? do you have any suggestions for settings/matrices/avs scripts, etc?

[Mug Funky]

9 passes???

i bet there were only 2 or 3 blocks encoded differently from the 8th pass (or even 4th).

anyhoo, i have similar experience with blocks in high-bitrate scenes. i work mainly with standards-converted (ie field-blended) stuff, so the problem is more pronounced than otherwise.

if you can, raise the max bitrate and it'll perform nicer. also, 2-pass can be preferable to 1-pass CQ with max bitrate.

however, i find HC to still give the overall best result in terms of consistent GOPs (important for multiangle!), max bitrate respect (all other encoders except maybe TMPG will go over by a little or a lot), and visual quality.

proof i guess that no encoder is perfect :)