This has been an ongoing issue for me with After Effects, and I only just sat down tonight to figure it out:

If I import a piece of DV footage into AE, do nothing to it (no adjustments, no curves, no nothing), and simply "Make Movie" w/ the highest settings, the result seems to have an almost film-like "stutter" to it. When viewed next to the original footage (on a television monitor) the effect seems very obvious. I can't really define it (and there's no room on my site to post it), but the quality of motion is just... different, if that makes sense. The movement in the original footage seems smoother and more "realistic." In fact, someone once complimented me that the video samples on my website looked "film-like" -- unfortunately, I had to admit that this seems due to the fact that I use AE to deinterlace the video (via the "2 layers w/ separate fields and 50% opacity" trick) before I encode it for the web. As with everything else I export from AE, those samples got the "film-like" look as well. You can see them in the Video section of my site, but I don't have any non-AE treated originals for you to compare them to.

"Film-like" might sound great to some, but it's not what I'm looking for in this project. I'm exporting as a DV .avi, with "Best" quality, and "Full" resolution. (The video samples mentioned above were exported as uncompressed .avi files to maintain the deinterlacing) I've not changed the frame rates. I thought adjusting the "Shutter Angle" might help, but that only affects motion blur. I can't seem to find anything else to adjust that would help.

I thought that someone else once commented on this problem before, but I can't find any reference to it now. Is anyone familiar with this?

I don't want to be that guy who bumps his own post and goes, "C'mon folks," but... C'mon folks...

Has no one else encountered this problem in AE? Am I not describing it well? Is the lack of examples causing reticence?

Would it help if I just ask those of you who export from AE in DV avi format for use on TV: How do *you* export from AE? In what format do you import you footage?

I've typically used AE for motion graphics work and such; now that I'm trying to export corrected DV avi video footage, I'm unhappy with this change in motion quality...

John,

I know what you're talking about, I've actually been running some footage through it just to get this effect.

But I don't know how to change it.

Sorry.

Do you have field rendering turned on? It is off by default. Try turning it on and then run this comparison again.

Ted--

Thank you very much, I think that did it! Of course, I now have a migraine from staring at the same 10 seconds of footage repeating for nearly an hour (kind of like being at the eye doctor and having him repeatedly ask, "Which do you prefer, number one...*click*...or number two?"), but it appears the answer was Field Rendering...

Lower fields first...seems so obvious now, but I never really fooled with the Field Rendering option in "Make Movie." Partly because it didn't seem necessary for titling effects and whatnot, and partly because it activated the 3:2 pulldown window -- so I assumed it had something to do with film/telecine work (which it sort of does, but not in the way I thought)

That was a huge help, Ted. I guess it *does* pay to bump your own threads :)

Thanks Ted.

That helps for me as well.