Lately, as I dip farther and farther into the realm of Age Related Old People Vision (which is close to blind), I err on the side of bit rate - even if I can’t see what difference it makes. I shoot for something around 3.5-4.5Mbps with CQ, if that won’t behave I’ll do a 2 pass in that bit rate neighborhood and call it a day. I have a lot of other things to worry about at my age.
I agree - and your settings re: CQ and bitrate pretty much match mine.
By the way, and for anyone dealing with PAL sources and cropping, I have managed to find out the 4:3 ratio to aim for in Display Size: 767 x 576 (which is basically the same active frame size as that of the sensor on some PAL cameras). So, if I need to trim the underscan/picture junk from the edges of a PAL 4:3 720x576 source, I can get 4:3 by tweaking the crop until the display size is 767x576. Sometimes I strike a balance between over-cropping/keeping as much picture as possible and this number - so I might end up with 768 or 766 but that’s not going to make much difference by the time it’s on a 16:9 TV screen. Also, equivalent Display Size to aim at for PAL 16:9 sources is 1024x576, which again fills a 16:9 screen edge-to-edge. I have anamorphic set to auto for all of this, and so far that’s not created any issues.
