[Jonathan Norris]

Mark, as you know by now all video encoding is a balancing act, I would say using Handbrake's high profile setting is a really good starting point even for HD encoding. There are many tools out there for measuring how close to the raw file your encode is picture wise, many developers and engineers on forums (particularly the Doom9 forum) have put a lot of effort into test x264 against comercial H264 encoders, and in most conditions it tests beter. But comparing one raw frame to an encoded frame won't tell you the whole story because alot of H264's magic juice comes with moving images.

It depends on what your station broadcasts at, you are probably broadcasting at 10-15mb/s mpeg4 720p. I would say that a 10mb/s 720p x264 encoded video would be noticeably better quality if its coming from a raw source. Heck if you are coming from a clean source I bet you could get away with a smaller bitrate, play with the constant quality setting on handbrake until you find something that is acceptable for you.