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

Report · Oct 22, 2020

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.