Pixelated exported After Effects and text in CS3 Premiere

[Ann Bens]

Still pixelated after rendering?

[Mike Canella]

Unfortunately, yes.

[Vince Becquiot]

First I would check your pixel aspect ratios. After Effects by default works in Square Pixels.

If you are bringing that into say a DV Widescreen (1.2) or DV (.9) Premiere project, the footage coming in is likely to be ineterpreted to the project PAR (thus pixelation).

Right click on the clip, choose interpret footage and make sure it is set to 1 (if that’s indeed the ratio you were working with in After Effects)

Vince Becquiot
Director | Editor

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Ann Bens]

Check your field order in AE. Should be the same as your project settings.

[George Shubin]

I am wondering if you ever got a solution to this problem? I too have recently discovered this problem with my CS3 PPro footage. It doesn’t matter what type of footage it is – I’ve rendered out uncompressed, animation QTs, DV, whatever, they look great when I reimport them into After Effects. But once they are on a time line they look like crap.

To describe it, at first glace you would assume a field issue, but playing with the field options produces no solutions (with the exception of the ‘Flicker Removal’ option which minimizes the issue but doesn’t solve it (and besides then you have to render out the clip). I doesn’t matter how the original clip was rendered out either, be it progressive, upper first, or lower first it is the same result.

At first I thought it was a codec issue. So I created a new PPro profile to use uncompressed footage. Same issue.

I’m at my wits end on this. If I save a frame out from the timeline it renders these errors and are quite obvious. So it is not just a display issue.

Any help would be appreciated.

BTW – my system: WinXP, 4gig RAM, Matrox RT.X2, Matrox Parhelia APVe display card

Thanks,
George Shubin

[Vince Becquiot]

Could you give us some concrete examples? Format, codec, pixel aspect ratio, resolution?

Vince Becquiot
Director | Editor

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[George Shubin]

sure, I just trying to do regular NTSC DV using the standard presets from Adobe both in AE and PPro. I’ve tried using the Microsoft DV codec, QT Animation codec, Uncompressed AVI, Uncompressed QT, progressive, lower first, upper first, square pixel, 0.9, 1.2 aspect ratio – these all have the same results.

If you preview them in Media Player they look fine. If you reimport them into an AE timeline they look fine. It is just when they go onto a PPro timeline that they look weird.

Thanks,
George Shubin

[Mike Canella]

Sorry for the delays guys…

But I still have not been able to resolve this issue! It will not work like you have mentioned whether it’s been rendered, compressed, or whatever.

I am working on an iMac but I do not think this is causing a problem. I know they work in different pixel shapes but I’ve tried adjusting for that and it doesn’t work either.

I resolved the problem with the credits in the clip by replacing it with title slates in Premiere… But the .mov I’ve exported out of AE still looks awful once brought into PPro

Here is the clip once exported out of PPro (with the old ugly credits)
https://www.jma.duq.edu/users/canella/pub/videoLinks/videoAEoutro.htm

I don’t think this is a setting in AE either. The credits were originally created in LiveType… so the problem has to be coming in Premiere.

[Vince Becquiot]

About 90% of the time, pixelation is due to a wrong Pixel aspect ratio somewhere in the chain. Let’s take a specific file here.

What was the Pixel Aspect Ratio in the file brought into AE ?
What are the composition settings in AE?
What are the export settings in AE?
Once imported in Premiere, right click on the clip, interpret footage. What are the settings ?

BTW, Premiere often wrongly interprets the pixel aspect ratio coming from AE.

Vince Becquiot
Director | Editor

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Mike Canella]

I am away from my machine right now but I will absolutely check this and get back to you tomorrow at some time…

Thanks for your help!