H264 in-loop deblocking filter, a good thing?

[deadrats]

here's a question for you guys, what's your opinion of in-loop deblocking filters, specifically x264's implementation? back when i used to use main concept's h264 encoder i used to disable it as it seemed to me that it would smooth out some details in an attempt to make the perceived quality seem higher (what it really did was give that "plastic doll" look to the encodes).

lately i have been playing around with 3 pass x264@uf encodes and while digging around some of the settings noticed that it too has an in-loop deblocking filter enabled by default. obviously the best answer is to do a bunch of test encodes and decide for myself, but i'm just wondering what some of you guys that use x264 all the time thing about this issue.

[poisondeathray]

Overall it's a good thing

Some people reduce the alpha/beta values when using higher bitrates (but actually internally, value is automatically adjusted at higher bitrates/lower quants), or even disable it when using enormous bitrates

It's automatically disabled when you use --tune fastdecode, because deblocking (along with CABAC) are probably the most CPU intensive attributes for decoding h264