[Samuel Enblom] "I'm pretty sure that if you export from avid with h.264 codec and then import into AE with current settings and then exporting again with the same settings the quality loss should be so slightly you wouldn't notice it since it wouldn't have to re-compress that much info..."
That's not entirely accurate.
When working with compressed video, AE (like all video processing applications) must first decompress the video into an uncompressed image buffer before it can render effects on it. When AE renders compressed video, it must start with an uncompressed image buffer because this is the only input a video codec can take.
Compressing an H.264 video from an H.264 source is somewhat like making an analog dub of tape -- you lose a generation and incur quality loss because any artifacts or loss from the first record are piped into the input of the second record, and compounded by artifacting and loss there as well.
With extremely high-quality lossy compression (as with extremely high quality tape), you can reduce -- but not eliminate -- this loss.
Walter Soyka
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