• Adobe After Effects

  Video Banding

  Posted by Brian Palmer on December 23, 2011 at 10:44 pm

  Hi,

  I’m getting some video banding from footage that we shot off of a tablet using the red camera. I used the noise reduction plug in that is standard in AE/CS5 but it’s a very long render. It does a good job but not the best. Any suggestions or tricks to fix this would be appreciated.

  It’s not flicker, it’s wavy banding from the tablet.

  Thanks!

  Michael Szalapski replied 14 years, 4 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  John Cuevas

  December 24, 2011 at 12:52 pm

  When I think of video banding, it’s usually when I create a gradient like in the examples here (just want to make sure we are talking about the same thing):

  

  If the video is for HD delivery, Kevin Camp’s offered a recipe that has worked well for me in the past.
  
  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.

  Roland Kahlenberg offers some notes if for web delivery.
  
  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.

  Johnny Cuevas, Editor
  Thinkck.com

  “I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
  —THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.
• 

  Michael Szalapski

  December 27, 2011 at 3:35 pm

  Excellent post, John.

  In case he’s not talking about banding, but instead is talking about the sort of issues that occur with refresh rates of screens. The best solution, in this case, may be to reshoot with the camera and tablet set up to avoid the screen refresh issue.
  Another solution would be to track the screen and replace the image with a non-flickering one in post.

  – The Great Szalam
  (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

  No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

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