I'm using Staxrip and am trying to find a good combination of settings for high quality rips.

Before everything gets redirected to the point of x264 vs. h264 or software vs. hardware encodes or which is better. I know the pros and cons of each and for archiving I'd simply use MeGui as I have in the past.

For this purpose, I simply want to rip my most commonly watched TV shows/music videos to store on my NAS for easy access/watching.

To start off with, I have an Intel HD 4600 chip with quick sync.

I was trying LA-ICQ with a quality setting between 20-26, usually depending on the resolution or the amount of action in the video. Recently, I checked some of the 1080p clips with an application called Bitrate Viewer and was surprised to see that at some point the peaks are exceeding 120,000 kbps. I noticed some other issues as well.

Are there any ways that I can still use the ICQ with lookahead and put a limit on the peak values?
Any other suggestions on really good constant quality with lookahead setting while keeping the bitrates reasonable?

I'm really not that familiar with Quick sync. I that some of the same settings use different terms/words for the same thing in x264 and h264 (for instance CQP & crf), that's about it.

Thanx in advance...