I have been using After Effects for a long time to do my visual effects and have always noticed the same problem. The image seems to lose its antialisis(?) when it is imported into AE. By this I mean you seem to lose detail with diagonal lines, they become pixilated. The settings I use for my project are the presets for wide screen DV footage (720X480 29.97FPS and 1.2 wide pixels) so I assume it should work and look great, but it doesn’t. Is there anything I’m overlooking? I’m going to try to add a link to two screen shots I made. Ignore the bleach bypass and digital filter I added (they didn’t cause it).

Before After Effects
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d18/thenextspielberg/raw.jpg

After After Effects
http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d18/thenextspielberg/final.jpg

It could be deinterlacing or resolution reduction. Check your settings. Try testing footage with a lot of motion.

Got it! It was seperating the fields and only using the lower. Because its a progressive image I was only getting half the vertical resolution. Thanx for the super fast response.