The settings used on the current 1080p essentially neuter the release. Even scene groups are required to use better quality presets these days. The motion estimation settings alone cause a huge amount of grain shift from frame to frame. There is so much more to x264 encoding than CRF values and bit rate. I already contacted TM-1 with baseline settings that would dramatically improve their video quality. I just hope they use them.
It sounds like they’re more willing to do some trial renders if they’re willing to give a 50gb aimed bitrate a test. And fortunately they’ll let us see the result. So hopefully they’ll test your settings as well. And hopefully they’ll adopt the moniker you’ve suggested of Team Megative 1.