You are right, but that would make an uglier plot :) Some of the intermediate options are available though, through various more fine-grained encoder settings

You are right, but that would make an uglier plot :) Some of the intermediate options are available though, through various more fine-grained encoder settings than what is exposed via the overall effort setting. Of course they will not fall exactly on the line that was drawn, but as a first approximation, the line is probably closer to the truth than the staircase, which would be an underestimate of what can be done.