Media Encoder is not producing sharp .mp4 exports, any help please?

Question

Hi all, I've been trying for a while now to export my After Effects CC 2014 project using Media Encoder CC 2014 as a MP4 file. I've chosen 'match source' settings, VBR 2 pass with various bitrates (even extremely high bitrate values) but my video is still not sharp. I've experimented with making the frame rate also higher but that doesn't make a difference. I've also tried using the 'Maximum render quality' option but that also doesn't help.
In the 'output' preview, the images look sharp like in the original project. But I can't get this in my final file. Anyone know why? Thank you very much.
Here are my settings:

Answer 1

MPEG compression (h.264 is MPEG) has a limited color space, compresses color, and has specific frame sizes that are required. Also, your media player has limitations and scaling problems. So do web pages. Nothing is perfect. The green text against the bluish background is going to look bad when you throw in compression artifacts from color and the fringes around the green text against the white background are also color compression artifacts. The solution is to first, modify the design to colors that work. You have to be sensitive to the color requirements of the space you are working in wither it is TV, WEB, Print or any other media. Most of these problems are color compression artifacts caused by the limited color space and limitations of MPEG compression.
The best hope for a design like this test to work is to first, make sure that your output is a legal h.264 size, second choose colors that will work against white backgrounds, third render a lossless master and finally, use that lossless master as the source for your MPEG compression in AME. You also make sure that your media player is not scaling the video.
If you absolutely have to have the video 392 X 640 then you are going to have resizing artifacts with H.264. You either have to accept that or change design of the web page and the HTML 5 code for the player. You also need to consider HR displays like the Retina displays on Macs or 4K displays on Windows machines or the displays on new mobile devices because they are going to want to see video and images that are 2X as big as a standard display. You'll also have to code for HR displays in your HTML. If this were my project I would make the master comp the nearest 2X the size needed for a standard web page that was a supported h.264 frame size, carefully choose my colors and design with known limitations in mind, render a lossless master in 10 bit or better 444 color, then send that to AME for compression. The web page would then be designed and the player coded with the video size taken into consideration.