I am trying out HC and I am hoping for it to produce quality as good as or close enough to TMPG. I put together a DVD with two versions of the same captured camcorder footage, one encoded with TMPG and the other with HC. I noticed the TMPG title to be noticeably better than HC by judging artifacts produced near the edges of the face of the subject of the movie among others. Before I rule out HC, I want to make sure I compared both encoders with their best foot forward.

TMPEG settings:
CBR @ 8500kbit/sec, 10bit DC precision, motion search preciesion: "highest quality"
HC settings:
VBR @ 8500kbit/sec, VBR bias = 100 (to approach CBR), 10bit DC precision, profile "best"

I am wondering if I set up HC for the best quality possible with these settings or if there is more to be gained, perhaps by means of the Constant Quantization settings?

If anybody can suggest how to set up HC for best uncompromised quality, please let me know. For me, disk space is not an issue. My main goal is optimum quality.

Description of the the captured video:
avi file
camcorder footage
captured at 720x480 29.97fps NTSC 4:1:1
no re-sizing applied