driftwood, I see why your original 24L for GOP1 turned to mush. You must of accidently dropped a zero when entering the number. Like you said, you were not concentrating on 24L, just 24H.
Here's what's in the file: Video Bitrate 24H=220000000 Video Bitrate 24L=17600000
LOL, .. no wonder GOP1 at 17.6Mb/s looked like shit. hehehe