After Effects CS6: Video blurry/low quality after Render in After Effects CS6, preview Fine

[Titatovenaar]

Hi there,

In After Effects I edited a 1080p video. The preview of the final composition looks fine, however the rendered output is very blurry (EDIT: looks more like 720p instead of 1080p, below pictures to clarify. Clearly loss of quality).

Original video properties:

Item type: .mp4
Frame width: 1920
Framde height: 1080
Frame rate: 30.00 Fps

Video imported, to be sure right-click > 'Interpret Footage' > 'Main' >

'Conform to frame rate: 30'
'Separate Fields: off
'Remove pulldown: off'
'Pixel Aspects Ratio: Square Pixels'

Preview is still looking fine. Now importing that video into a new composition. Composition settings:

'Preset: Custom' (also tried here preset 'HDTV 1080 29.97')
'Width: 1920'
'Height: 1080'
'Pixel Aspects Ratio: Square Pixels'
'Frame Rate: 30'
'Resolution: Full'

Preview is still looking fine. Now File > Export > Add to Render Que. Render settings:

'Quality: Best' (with 'current settings' it has the same quality loss)
'Resolution: Full'
'Size 1920x1080'
'Use comp's frame rate: 30.00'

Output Module settings:

'Format: H.264'
'Post-Render Action: None'
'Channels: RGB'
'Depth: Millions of Colors'
'Premultiplied (Matted)'

During the render, the preview also shows the right quality. After the render, I open the file in VLC and there it shows poor quality. Meanwhile the same VLC player shows the original video in high quality.

Any suggestions what I miss?

Kind regards, Igor

[Mylenium]

Screenshots? I'm having a hard time believing that just running a clip twice through AE should degrade it so much.

Mylenium

[Titatovenaar]

It is probably something else for sure, since everything looks fine if you look at the properties, but you can clearly see the quality loss below. I on purpose took a minecraft game example, so you can see a very clear difference:

HDQuality loss

Kind regards,

Igor

[Titatovenaar]

Also, just to be entirely sure, I opened a new project (again), and in the screenshot all the settings I use, and come to the exact same quality loss.

[Titatovenaar]

And now I know that actually the only settings I haven't posted are the Codec settings. I had no knowledge of this, but now I do. I changed my settings from VBR and CBR, and increased the bitrate. Quality output is now exactly the same as the input!

Thanks for thinking with me,

Igor