After Effects - loss of resolution through screen magnification

[geoffreya28176583]

Hi

Why do imported vector images lose so much resolution when screen magnification is increased to, say, 800-1600?

[Mylenium]

Not sure what you are asking. AE strictly operates on pixels because it produces video. It simply hasn't dynamic zoom-based rasterization like Illustrator. I don't see how this would be in any way relevant or useful. You simply have to get used to it and adjust your thinking.

Mylenium

[Nicholas223308118xtj]

Comments like these are incredibly unhelpful and unfortunately I find them very frequently. Very condescending and unnecessary.

[foughtthelaw · Accepted solution]

no matter what type of footage you're looking at, if you're zoomed in at 800%  or greater, you're going to see pixillation. AE only outputs bitmap images (because currently that's all video is). AE treats vector images as being relative to their document size. so if you import it and it's 1920x1080, it will look normal at 100%. If you double your comp size to 3840x2160 and then scale your vector up to 200% you'll notice pixelation. The way to fix that (if it becomes an issue) is to enable the "continuously raster" checkbox on the layer in your comp's timeline. That way After Effects will re-draw the vector layer based on the layer's scale.

[Rick Gerard]

You need to do some study on the AE UI and understand that when you are working with video you are always looking at pixels. Everything you see in the composition panel is made of pixels. Vector images are rasterized and turned into pixels. The magnification factor is exactly like looking at the composition through a magnifying glass. The pixels get bigger.

When you continuously rasterize a vector image it is rasterized after the scaling. This means you can scale it up to 1000% or move the camera in very close, and then the pixels will be rendered so the edges stay clean.

One last point, video quality can only be judged at full size (100% of the frame size) and at full frame rate. Any quality issue you may have with a single frame of video is not an issue unless it can be seen when you are playing the video on the intended devise in real tijme.