Hey Martin
Was bored a bit and tested some things with sequences in AE (because your problem was wondering me).
I dont used AE since ages for final compressed renderings, just for rendering out lossless footage, most of the time for Premiere projects (where i did all my final renders in the end). My results were indeed sudden ones, H.264 codec wise:
- AE (5.5), pic-sequence, HDTV 720 25, optimal settings, compressed via H.264 with 5 MBit/s, VBR 1-Pass (max. possible value in my version) by AE exporter (via renderlist and settings) = Look was fuzzy and muddy, not good in all.
- AE, same sequence and settings, output as lossless/.avi by AE exporter = Good result, as expected.
- PR (5.5), same sequence and settings, H.264 compressed via up-popping Adobe Media Encoder, 5 MBit/s, VBR-2 Pass, high quality/render depth boxes cheched = Much better result than in AE, hmnn..
Even the uncompressed .avi file from AE, H.264 compressed in Premiere with the Adobe Media Encoder, was looking as expected for 5 MBit/s.
AE cant handle the codec not that good as Premiere does it seems and i dont know why. Thats strange and disturbing - but my personal results now.
And why can do AE handle .exr files natively and Premiere cant (in one Creative Suite!)? But thats another story of many little annoying Adobe CS storys.. -.-
Conclusion: Blame Adobe for their bad H.264 integration - in AE at least!
Greetings, Alex