I just wanted to know what you folks think about the sharpen filter in TMPGEnc.

I found that the "Sharpen" filter can produce a very sharp and "plastic" picture.
Especially when downsizing from DivX to standard VCD resolution (well usually 336x160/192 letterbox) I nearly always use it with at least 50/50 setting.

I just encoded the HQ WarCraft III trailer using the 704x480 template with a letterboxed 640x288 (keeping the original res.) motion area and different "sharpen" settings.

without sharpening:
superb picture quality, smooth to the eye

with sharpening:
picture looked worse ("over-sharp") on my monitor, but quite a lot better than without sharpening on my TV (over TV-Out).

I guess it depends on the TV set you got, but mine definitely blurs the movie a bit and the "extra sharpness" compensates for it.


Some fact that might interest you:

no sharpening -----> 21.6 MB
127/127 sharpen -----> 23.9 MB
127/127 field based -----> 24.4 MB

As was to be expected TMPGEnc needs a higher bitrate to compress the sharpened movie.
I don't know if this clip is in any form representative, but a detailed analysis might yield better prediction of the final filesize.

greetings,
b00n

Edit:
I just encoded the clip without sharpen and with GOP settings 1 3 3 1 0.
filesize 22,2 MB

it looks even better now - before there was some disturbance at scene changes.