Just want to share the experience. I'm soon out with a new video for the band as, since we're gonna do some serious promotion this time, I want it to look its best. Therefore I tried the two encoders (Sony and Mainconcept) at different rendering settings to check out what's best. Since this is going both on terrestrial tv and of course youtube, there's really no limit - it can be a large file (YT will of course re-encode on upload, so I have to test what looks better there).
Now for anything from 16Mbps up in general I think very few viewers would actually notice much difference - one really has to look and know what to look for to see them. Obviously within large, reasonable limits most viewers are far more focused on the content (thank godness!) than the visual detail. The video is filmed and colored as an indie movie so I wanted the final look to match that vibe. I also haven't really disabled resample almost anywhere in the project because none of the exports have suffered of major problem in any way. Differences are minimal and any of the renderings would work fine.
I found that both encoders do a reasonably good job so long they have enough bitrate to work with. With stock setting, didn't like too much the 24fps/16Mbps Mainconcept - there was some (subtle but perceptible) stuttering on slightly slowed down scense (all the footage is 50p to allow for slowdowns). Sony (at 24fps/25Mbps) was better, but still some movements were still blurred in a not so nice way. So no "film" rate for this one. Sony 30fps/16Mbps wasnt less better than I expected, while going for the Sony at full throttle - 50fps and 25bps - eliminated all the movement imperfections and gave a very "digital" and detailed look - TV-documetnary style. Perfect for precision but not so great for vibe. Also the color rendering was a little less good than I liked, with still a little noticeable artifacts in the fuill-white walls hit by oblique lights. Could live with that tough - and the size was 650Gb for about 4 mins video.
Then I ran the Mainconcept again, this time with pretty heavy options - NSTC fps (29,970), variable bitrate with average 24mbps and 50 max, two pass and 2 reference frames - and it really knocked it! Good color, smooth movements but much less clinic looks. Quite impressive. The result wasn't so different in size, about 750Gb.
Without it being an exhaustive test, and granting that both encoders produce good results when set alright, the rule of thumb for me now is to use the Sony for detail and accuracy and the Mainconcept for film-like stuff.
Cheers,
-cris