[Quarkboy]

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that the "postprocessing" in VLC (the one that goes from 0 to 6) has nothing to do with h.264 in loop deblocking filter.
After all, that option is still there when playing xvids, right? So you're saying its function changes depending on the codec used in the playback file?

I think that VLC simply doesn't have the ability to disable the in-loop deblocking filter (unlike ffdshow). Setting the VLC postprocessing to anything higher than 0 will probably simply make the video worse assuming is was competantly encoded.

You'd have to ask the developers to be sure, but that makes sense to me.

Not to mention, the h.264 in loop deblocking filter is NOT advjustable at decode time. You set the strength for encode, and that's fixed. It's possible to skip the filter entirely, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible to modify the strength of the fly. Furthermore the ranges don't add up. h.264 deblocking has 2 paramters that can both range from -6 to 6. VLC has one parameter that ranges from 0 to 6... it just doesn't make sense to say they're connected in any way.