Encoding/Resizing line graphics

[MattKB]

I have an HD (1280x720) source that I am transcoding to various bitrates and frame sizes (same aspect ratio) using x264.

I am getting good results on the video.

The beginning of the video has a graphic logo, which not surprisingly gets slightly distorted/pixelated when transcoded and resized.

I'm just wondering if there are any encoding settings I should be looking at to potentially get better results when resizing line graphics.

Thanks

[Conquerist]

If you want to increase the quality when down or up-scaling, your best bet is probably to use a better resize algorithm.
There are lots of high quality resize filters for avisynth, such as Spline36Resize, BlackmanResize, etc. Look at http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Resize for descriptions of all the built-in resize filters.

[poisondeathray]

You might want to turn off adaptive quantization, psy-rd and psy-trellis if you are using one of the newer builds, or turn the strength down - I find they can cause artifacting in scenarios like you described

You might want to use higher alpha & beta values for deblocking (0,0) or higher like (1,1)

Consider using higher bitrate as well

If excessive bitrate is a concern you (e.g if this is for streaming flash, with bandwidth limitations), you could encode in "zones" with MeGUI, using a different setting for different segments of the video, like a lower quantizer for the segments with artifacts, and back to normal quantizer for the other normal segments.

You might also consider applying filters in segments with avisynth, if the above suggestions aren't quite good enough

[Sharktooth]

try disabling AQ or lowering the AQ strenght first.