Media encoder exporting AE file at lower quality and file size than preset and estimated file size

I am very frustrated. Media encoder has been working perfectly fine for rendering my AE animations (as early as yesterday) until today. I tried exporting my AE file through media encoder using High Quality 1080p HD preset and it comes out super small in size (781kb) and blurry. Yesterday I exported an AE animation in a lower quality preset and it came out crisp.

For reference:

• The video is 4s long (just yesterday I exported a 5s long video and it came out perfectly crisp at 2mb, with estimated file size 5mb or so)
• The estimated file size indicated in ME with the High quality 1080p HD preset says 11mb (usually when I export the estimate is accurate and I'm using this preset because nothing is giving me the same quality as the source video)
• The source and output preview in ME is crisp
• The file is 1920x1080, 29.97 frame rate
• Format set to H.264
• Encoding settings are with Profile: High - Level: 4.2
• Bitrate VBR, 1pass - Target 20

I tried everything, switched up the settings, tried exporting using different programs and it still comes out blurry. When rendering as a .mov through AE directly, it comes out looking crisp. But I need it in mp4 and nothing seems to work! Searched through all the forums and found no solutions. 

Can anyone help me out? 😞

Screenshots below for reference (doesn't really show very well).

Screen shot of the AE preview

Screen shot of the blurry .mp4 Media encoder export

 Screenshot of the .mov AE export