Playback is super pixely and laggy at certain points

[Jordyn0817]

I have hardly started my project, trying to learn the ropes of after effects. I can't even get past step one. Why can't I see certain portions of my video. If I take the same clip and just play it in media player, there are no issues. Any help is appreciated

[Mylenium]

Not AE's fault. Captured game footage often contains problematic stuff such as variable frame rates and data rates, adaptive MPEG structures odd distribution of intra-image blocks and GOPs in the stream and so on. You need to transcode it in another tool like Handbrake to make it compliant with established production standards, which kind of is the point here. As a professional design tool AE is built around some adherence to specs and standards and simply doesn't liek much else. To avoid these issues in the future delve into the settings and enforce proper stream formatting with constant frame rates and all that.

Mylenium

[Jordyn0817]

Any chance you could be a bit more detailed on the handbrake part? I tried to figure it out on my own but the video is still unchanged

[ShiveringCactus]

How did you make the composition?  If you drag your video file onto this icon in the project window, AE will match the video resolution, frame rate and duraction:

But... even then, as Mylenium states, the captured game footage might still be screwed up.  Try converting the video in AME or Handbrake.  This will produce a video that's in better shape to edit with.  I know from experience that a high quality MP4 should be fine, but you might want to try using the ProRes codecs which produces a much better, but much larger file.