Video is exporting blurry as a matched source, but looks great in monitor?

[shadeobrady]

I've pulled in 5 videos and clippled them up to create a 50 second reel showing short segments of each. The video is for an HTML 5 embed on a website so it's at an odd size (235x162).

Everything looks great when viewing the editable composition within Premiere (and I've tried this in After Effects as well), but when I go to export the video ends up blurry no matter if I match the source or fiddle with the settings.

I'm guessing something is going on due to sourcing from multiple video files that are in different wrappers and codecs? If so, why would I be able to edit so cleanly (and render in program), but cannot export at the same quality??

• If it's the codec issue, what's the best format to convert all of these to if it's exporting to an HTML 5 video (if that last part even matters)?
• Does anyone have experience with the best settings for exporting .mp4 h.264 for web use? I want to get this thing small in file size, but still good quality.

Here's a rundown of the imported videos I've been clipping up assuming its an issue with one of them (audio does not matter, we're not exporting it):


1. MPEG4, AVC, Variable rate, Progressive
2. Quicktime MPEG-4, AVC, Progressive
3. Quicktime MPEG-4, AVC, Progressive
4. MPEG-4, AVC, Variable rate, Progressive
5. Quicktime MPEG-4, Sorenson 3, Not progressive but I'm not seeing what it is




Thank you!

[aedipuss]

235 isn't a good size. make it an even number preferably divisible by 4 or even better 16. and re-encoding already highly compressed mp4 will always be poorer quality than the source.

[shadeobrady]

Thanks aedipuss!

I wasn't sure about those videos - I ended up resizing them down, so I figured even with compression that they would still be sharp enough (maybe I'm comparing this too much to photoshop/still image editing). I'll try rendering all of those over again initially.


Is there a reason for 4 or 16 divisions? The reason that size is weird is because the video will be laying over a projector image on the webpage running in HTML5 and that was the size of that area.

[aedipuss]

the encoder works in square blocks of 16x16 pixels. not all players can handle non mod16 h264 video. and more bits/pixel are required at non mod16.

[shadeobrady]

the encoder works in square blocks of 16x16 pixels. not all players can handle non mod16 h264 video. and more bits/pixel are required at non mod16.

Thanks a lot for this! I changed it to 240x160 and it looks A LOT better! I've always worked in DVD and HD so I've never run into this issue.