Thanks to the AVISynth script I found on one of the ATSC to x264 tutorials, I have finally found the ideal solution.

Unfortunately I am unable to upload an example because my laptop is out of commission, but that problem will be fixed within the next week or so, and I will be uploading the final results with the new script.

As before, I realized that quite a bit of my speed issues were due to not having sufficient physical memory onboard. Unfortunately, that won't be resolved until I finish building the new system because I'm not sinking anymore money into the current setup. Once it's built, my current system will probably become a Linux video box, or most likely a plain Linux box, and 512MB should be more than enough.

But anyways, the results should be coming soon. Apart from using Lanczos4Resize2, there was no sharpening used. The end results are plenty sharp without it, and it was a slowdown I didn't need. Maybe I'll reenable it with the new system, but I doubt it, since the results look just fine on my TV.