What am I doing wrong here? I rendered this out of Adobe Media

I'll add that even using AME's 1080p 29.97 FPS preset yielded the same, crappy results.

>what am I doing wrong here?
>After effects.

/Thread

AME is somewhat garbo, render to something lossless and then use X264.

Adding a small amount of grain will also help reduce banding.

>>308162
>AME is somewhat garbo

Bullshit. The problem is the output settings.

>>308173
Head-to-heads and results in actual production environments don't lie. OP will get better results with x264, and any amount of tinkering with AME settings to also get it "good enough" could also be spent on further improving x264 output.

That said, that doesn't mean that OP's settings aren't fatally flawed too. Seriously, add a little bit of goddamn grain.

>>308162
>render to something lossless and then use X264
At the risk of sounding like a really stupid asshole, could you give me a rough example of what settings I should use with the x264 codec? This is honestly the first time I've ever even heard of that.

>>308173
>Bullshit. The problem is the output settings.
Well. I DID put my output settings in the OP. Care to tell me what's wrong with them?

>>308191
>Seriously, add a little bit of goddamn grain.
Yeah, I have no idea what happened. I actually did add some noise to the background, but I guess it was too subtle to really do anything in the final product, given the enormous difference in quality.

>>308196
Your target sounds roughly like Bluray, I'd get started with options from http://www.x264bluray.com/home/1080i-p . Glancing at Doom9 is also an option, but I've honestly never had to go really deep for issues that obvious.

Oh, also spitballing here, the 3d rendered waves look fairly aliased even in your raw screenshot, applying some AA (even a simple slight blur) may improve results too. Any MPEG-4 implementation tends to go full autism on that kind of detail and starve other parts of the scene.

>>308200
>Your target sounds roughly like Bluray, I'd get started with options from http://www.x264bluray.com/home/1080i-p
Thanks for the info anon. Will these settings be okay for encoding 60 fps video though? I am completely new to encoding as a whole and I'm assuming this will require different settings.

>>308200
>Any MPEG-4 implementation tends to go full autism on that kind of detail and starve other parts of the scene.
Never knew that. Thank you for the advice. What I had figured was that I'd add use a low poly aliased water wave to begin with and fix it once I had found usable settings. Never would have thought that it would affect the encoding itself.

Damnit, why must rendering and encoding be so complicated? Would you recommend using Handbrake for this?

>>308201
There's some thought you can give to framerate if you want to get seriously into perceptive optimization, like prioritizing fewer keyframes because the scene changes they're supposed to account for are "twice as far apart", but it's frankly deep video wizardry above my "manage a small team, learn from and trust my video guys" pay grade. And BD bitrates are intended to be near-transparent for normal workloads so it may not even help.
I'm honestly unsure whether or how much fr-based logic x264 has, as my normal workflow is VFR for mixed 24/30 content, but it should also autodetect CFR input rate.

I'd avoid Handbrake because who knows how old the x264 in it is and what settings and assumptions catered toward the "fit my camrip on a CD-R" crowd are hidden deep in its UI.

>>308208
Not that anon but Handbrake's h264 compression always worked fine for me.

>>308125
That looks like a color depth problem.
>Make sure your comp is at 16/32 bits
>Export in a lossless format such as ProRes or Quicktime Animation.
>Check rendered video, it should look good
>transcode the lossless rendered video to h264

>>308212
Yeah, it's not that Handbrake's components are definitely bad, it's that I don't know they're good.

Color depth is definitely another thing, anime went to 10bit specifically to reduce banding through better intermediate processing.

>>308215
by which I mean, the efficiency increase from using a 10bit-capable encoder to produce 8bit was nearly as large as the increase from that encode to full 10bit. You don't have to ship high-color-depth video (and shouldn't unless you have a bespoke player) to see the advantages of an encoder that's configured to be aware of it.

File: AVI.jpg (2MB, 1920x1080px)

2MB, 1920x1080px

>>308212
>Not that anon but Handbrake's h264 compression always worked fine for me.
I'm actually giving Handbrake a go at the moment. Mainly just because I've used it before. I seriously never knew that there was this much to encoding. What a pain in the ass.

>>308212
>>Make sure your comp is at 16/32 bits
I actually did. That's the main reason why my initial output was so puzzling.

>>308212
>>Export in a lossless format such as ProRes or Quicktime Animation.
Also, so beginner question -- Is this really a typical process for a content creator? Just a 1 minute clip of this animation ended up being 20GB. The whole thing is 5 minutes long.

>>308212
>>transcode the lossless rendered video to h264
You have some quick settings you can share? Possibly for 60 fps? Should I just give up on my 60 fps endeavor?

>>308215
What would you say is the best encoder?

>>308222
It's typically masked by a lot of scripting or copypasta - it's Saturday and I'm not at work to even be able to give you the script I probably shouldn't share, but my actual interaction in the encode process is drag-dropping the final lossless on top of its icon and going out to smoke half a pack and play some LoveLive.
For perspective on how worth it it is to use x264 AND how normal a process it is, there are $300 shims exist to do nothing but pipe lossless AFX/Premiere output directly into x264 without creating an intermediate file (which, by the way, you can delete as soon as your encode is done.)

Encoding @60 with those Bluray settings should be fine, it's not necessarily optimal-optimal but a LOT of optimization goes out the window when you have Bluray-scale bitrate legroom - I can't think of a commercial encoder that isn't objectively worse head-to-head with x264 but a lot of them hang on because at those bitrates it doesn't incredibly matter.

>>308222
>Is this really a typical process for a content creator?
Wouldn't say so, but it's a good way to troubleshoot. After it you can rule out if the problem is qith the comp itself or the h264 encoding

>>308222
>Just a 1 minute clip of this animation ended up being 20GB
Yeah, those are heavy. ProRes is a little bit lighter, not totally lossless but if you use the 422HQ codec no one will be able to tell it's lossy, looks perfect.
If you are on PC and can't export to ProRes, I have the codec installer uploaded here. I guarantee it's clean but download at your own risk since this is 4chan and that's an exe.
>http://www.mediafire.com/file/o2yqn2mfm1lv99v/Miraizon_DNxHD_and_ProRes_Codecs_V2.0_%28Team_VR%29.exe

>>308222
>Should I just give up on my 60 fps endeavor?
No
>You have some quick settings you can share?
In Adobe Media Encode choose Quicktime, set the codec to h264, click on Match Source (or make sure the dimentions and framerate of your output are the same as your source), uncheck the box that says "limit data rate to ____"