Trapcode animation gets pixelated upon export, no clue how to fix.

[John Cuevas]

Youtube is going to convert and compress your video, so you should expect some loss of quality. One thing you could do export an uncompressed AVI or QT and upload that(it will be a huge file), or bring that file into Media Encoder and use one of the youtube presets—I find that my videos encoded to Youtube specs seem to stay at a higher quality if there is less conversion to be done by them.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[Ivan Myles]

[Ryan Geldermann] “I export it (either as prores or animation) and it looks almost as pristine, but already slightly pixely. “

[John Cuevas] “Youtube is going to convert and compress your video, so you should expect some loss of quality.”

+1

The sample video above is suffering from macroblocking, which is a symptom of bitrate starvation. The bitrate of a typical YouTube video is about 1/10 of a DVD/BD disc, less than 1/50 of ProRes HQ, and a tiny fraction of QT Animation.

What is the target delivery method for the final video? The animation should be designed for low bitrate if it will be distributed primarily via YouTube. This means solid colors instead of gradients and reduced variation from frame-to-frame over a smaller portion of the image. Also set AE color management and bit depth to minimize color conversion artifacts.

[Ryan Geldermann]

My target delivery is youtube, when my band doesn’t have music videos ready we wanted to post these visualizers instead. I can’t believe it’s 2013 and we don’t have the technology yet to post clean animation to youtube.

I don’t understand how something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUBcYogq-3M

can show up perfectly clean on youtube, but my visualizer can’t. Is there something inherently different about what I’m trying to do?

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[Cassius Marques]

in 1080p both your video and that example show the same kind of artifacts. Its a matter of compression, your whole frame changes every single frame. You perceive the other video being crispy clean in either static frames (like the end letterings) or scenes that have a lot of black, thus leaving the compressor with more data to work on things that are actually moving/changing.

Vimeo has a better output than youtube. Also your video in 1080p looks alright, I can see the compression you’re mentioning but its still ok.

[Ivan Myles]

There are ways to optimize the encoder settings to produce better quality at low bitrates. In this regard it would be helpful if you posted more information regarding your export settings. Beyond that, there are design choices in your video that don’t lend themselves to high compression.

H.264 uses a small number of complete frame images to generate several other frames. Many of the CoD animations in that trailer use stable backgrounds that move but otherwise don’t change much. (There is a lot of simulated camera shaking, which minimizes the background deltas to the edges of the frame.) This enables pixel blocks in one frame to be reused in neighboring frames with a manageable level of change. The sections with more motion (like the train explosion at 0:22) still exhibit blocking/pixelation; it’s just not as noticeable because it is a very short portion of entire video.

Try simplifying the animation. For example, focus on the circle and eliminate most of the horizontal lines. Try encoding again to see if the quality improves. If there is headroom, add some more complexity. If the problems still exist, keep simplifying.