Pixelation in H.264 export

Question

There is an odd glitch that occurs when I export my video as an H.264 with an adaptive bitrate, target bitrate 15.2. Anytime there is movement in the frame, the movement is pixelated - I can see the edges of pixels forming block-like structures around any motion blur. This doesn't occur when I export as a Quicktime Apple Pro Res 422, and it is not in the original footage. My current work around is to export as a Quicktime file first, then export as H264 through media encoder. I also changed the bitrate settings to 2-passes. However, this adds unnecessary time (and hard drive space) to things I need to export quickly only for web consumption.

R Neil Haugen · Answer

That's due to the compression process of long-GOP media. It saves space in it's writing method by grouping pixels and when there are a block of 4, 9, something like that ... if they're pretty close between the pixels, it makes them all the same.

And yea, it's something you have to be aware of. And for which exporting to ProRes or a DNx variant, then doing the compressed H.264 export from that can be helpful as you found.

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