Gradient Banding

Gradient Banding

by Ryan Barnes

on Nov 5, 2010 at 1:56:57 pm

I am working on a project in After Effects CS5 and when I render it all the gradients become banded. I have tried rendering it in these codecs ( H.264, Apple Pro Res 422, and Photo-JPEG) I have also tried each of these codecs both in 8bpc and 16 bpc but nothing seems to be fixing this.

Re: Gradient Banding

by Kevin Camp

on Nov 5, 2010 at 3:15:55 pm

you should never render form ae to h.264. it's not a working codec, and should only be used for delivery. and should always be done with software that will do a multipass encode.

pro res and photo-jpeg are fine though, and if this is an intermediate step (ie, the animation is going to an nle or some other stage), then i'd set the photo-jpeg setting to 90-95%.

as for banding, you can usually add an adjustment layer with the noise effect on it. it shouldn't take much noise (less that 5%) to hide the banding.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

Re: Gradient Banding

by Roland R. Kahlenberg

on Nov 5, 2010 at 3:24:43 pm

Blurring one or more of the color channels does a better job for reducing or eliminating banding problems. Adding noise more to a comp which may be destined for Web delivery will only result in a poorer quality web version as compressors usually have a harder time compressing noise.

Use Effect>Channel Blur and increase one of the values to solve your problem. You can tell which channel needs more attention by looking at the individual color channels in the Comp Panel prior to applying Channel Blur.

HTH
RoRK

AE Training in South East Asia. AE templates for sale and rental. Click here for more

Re: Gradient Banding

by Ryan Barnes

on Nov 5, 2010 at 3:32:15 pm

OKay, Thanks for the help!