why does the video after rendering looks different?

[Emily238749104759]

Hi.

So why does my edit looks so different when done rendering than when i previewed it?

my issue is that when i added sharpen then rendered it i checked the finished video and it looks like i didnt add sharpen at all even tho when previewing (before rendered) it has sharpen in it.

Then i added directional blur and brightness to the clip and when i rendered i saw the video and it looks so wierd, the brightness looks so light and the directional blur looks blurred and it doesnt look like directional blur at all,

anyways i also decreased the opacity (from 100 to 0 keyframe) but when u rendered it looks so off, it looks like this

as you can see there are lines at the edge ( right when the opacity is starting to drop)

im going to be showing you what the directional blur and brightness looks like before rendered:

 

and what it looks like after:

please help me

[Warren Heaton]

Your Composition Resolution is set to "Quarter" and you are rendering at Full resolution.

Quarter resolution is great for working quickly in After Effects, but we're trading image quality for speed.  Some effects look very similar at different resolutions and others look surprisingly different.

Change the Comp Resolution from Quarter to Full and what you are seeing in the Comp should very closely match - if not exactly match - what you see in the rendered movie.

[Emily238749104759]

ok so i tried changing it to full and added it to adobe media encoder and it still looks the same. maybe i should just render from the after effects? but it could still look the same..

what should i do

[Warren Heaton · Accepted solution]

It sounds like you want the rendered movie to match Quarter resolution.

In the Render Settings settings, change Resolution from Full to Quarter.  Then in the Output Module settings, enable Resize and set it to the current Comp size.

You'll have to do this via the After Effects Render Queue instead of Media Encoder as Media Encoder always uses Full resolution, rendering a Lossless movie first that is then transcodeed to MP4 in Media Encoder.

Or, you can use the Scale Comp script to scale your Comp to 0.25, then nest that into a new Comp at the original frame size changing the scale from 100% to 400% (or use Fit to Comp for the same results).  

These may seem like it should not be necessary, but After Effects and Media Encoder default to Full resolution output.  If we wind up liking how a lower resolution looks, we have to manually step in. 

[Emily238749104759]

i tried all your steps and settings on ae render queue then i went to my files to see if it worked but i opened it and instead, it saved the "footage" of the one original clip ( the clip of the video that was inserted if u double click the file, i hope that made sense) im so confused because the "output to:" was directed to the ORIGINAL video/ scenepack i got to edit it from

it was like it never had saved the real comp that has been edited but instead it took and saved the "footage" of the video

[Oisze337482364sqs]

Yes! This solved my render issue, thank you!!