Premiere Pro | linked After Effects comp scaled to 50% = pixelated. Scaling to 50.1% fixes???

Premiere – 24.6.1

Windows 11 Pro (23H2)

CPU - 13900k

GPU – 3070Ti

I came across an issue where setting the scale of a linked After Effects comp to 50% results in a noticeable pixelated image.

For reference, the After Effects comps are 3840x2160 (25fps) and I'm placing that on a 1920x1080 (25fps) Premiere timeline.

I've tried both setting the scale manually to 50%, as well as Right Click>Scale to Frame size.

This issue shows up both in Premiere, as well as on export.

I found that increasing the scale above 50% solved the issue.  I've attached two frame grabs showing the difference between 50% scale and 50.1%.

This happens with both dynamically linked AE files, as well as Motion Graphic Templates that I created.

Not entirely sure what’s going on here.  It’s not something that I’ve come across before, so seems like a bug, however I’m open to it being a setting I’m unaware of.