ElevatedX video transcoder settings for watermarking WMVs?
 

Setting up a new paysite network and I'm hoping to get some input from people who've tried multiple settings for eX's video transcoder. What we need to do is simply add a watermark to 720x480 WMVs that are already uploaded.. Here's the problem:
Before uploading, I optimized all files in videocharge using batch process, kept source resolution but set the bitrate down to ~1300, videos look nice and each scene is about 170-200Mb.
Now, after watermarking in eX, same or +100 bitrate, end files are ~15-30megs larger which is fine, but video quality degraded A LOT (mostly in fast moving scenes).
I don't want to set the bitrate up to 2-3000 just to preserve the quality, as this is probably a codec issue or something similar (I hope).
There's a video codec field, currently set to wmv2, is there a better option?
Should I reduce fps rate to 24? (and will this cause the audio to go out of sync?)
Share your experiences please :) any help greatly appreciated

You're re-encoding videos when you watermark them. No matter what software you use you will always lose quality when you re-encode an encoded video.

I've never used ElevatedX but I know you can watermark in Videocharge. You'll need to start all over again if you want quality AND a watermark.

yup I know about loss at re-encode but it's really significant (ie full dvd rez to start with, and end result looks like 320x240 mpeg blown up fullscreen).. compression artifacts on sudden scene changes, and all action closeups (alot of these vids are latinas and black booty scenes, and you know how those girls work :D
I was hoping its caused by something that slipped my attention (flvs look great, mpeg clips too, mp4 also good, transcoder works well on all tasks except wmv)