tiff sequence to mpeg2 for dvd - best encoder?

After the "digital negative" tiff sequence is done. Has anyone experimented with different (2 pass VBR) mpeg2 encoding methods? My basic options are AE or uncompressed 8 bit to Compressor for encoding (I'm pretty sure 10 bit would choke my drives). Anyone tried AE encoding vs anything else? any noticeable difference?

Thanks

Edit: Uhhh, I feel dumb, AE apparently has no mpeg2 encoding - so my options are limited.
Edit2: Jussing's post about ffmpegx led me to a number of web postings, consensus seems to be that while Compressor is slower, it's better than ffmpegx.

So Compressor it is, unless something better comes along.

Edit3: after testing, the Animation codec looks much better than 8 Bit Uncompressed - and preserves the gamma better.
So my current workflow is Tiff>Animation>to Compressor for mpeg2