I looked for this magic bullet for months only to be told the same thing over and over: "It depends". Encoding is as much an art as it is a science. Scenes with lots of movement, lots of pattern or high contrast colors require totally different settings then a evenly lit shot indoors on a bed. Key frame rates, bit rates and the tweaking of contrast, saturation and white balance all effect the final product.

My earliest encoding efforts are files that are far larger and much less attractive than the ones we release now. We shoot, light and edit with an eye toward the encoding process. Even the transitions have to be taken into account.

The hardest encoding scene? Outdoor j/o shower with trees moving in the wind. Toughest thing ever.