band of rings instead of smooth tone?

[Todd Heyman]

i am working on an apple display i could try and see if it looks any different on a crt monitor..

[Darby Edelen]

Blurring will only help if you have set your project to 16bpc so that the blur will actually generate intermediate values (between those possible in 8bpc), otherwise you’re just spreading out the 8bpc values.

Noise should help regardless of your bpc settings. My recommendation is to create a 50% gray comp sized solid at the top of your timeline, apply monochromatic noise at a fairly high % and change the blend mode of the layer to overlay. You can reduce the opacity of this layer to reduce the noise.

And finally, avoid the old school 8bpc Spotlight effect all together! Use a 3D solid and a spotlight in AE if you don’t mind dealing with higher render times (32bpc capable). Or use a masked black solid layer set to Multiply as a vignette (32bpc capable).

Darby Edelen

NVIDIA
Santa Clara, CA

[Todd Heyman]

thanks everyone.

darby, the 3D solid with a spotlight, are you saying create a solid click 3D then add spotlight effect (under perspective)? isnt that the same spotlight im using? is there a different spotlight?

I was able to get the rings to dissipate by bringing the layer underneath (the boxshot) up from -100 brightness to -98.

[Kevin Camp]

i think he was referring to adding a 3d light source (layer>new>light…) to shine on the 3d solid to produce the spotlight illumination that cc spotlight was giving you.

as far as the codec, i’ve been unable to find another free multi-platform 16 bpc codec… you might give the blackmagic uncompressed codecs a try (on the right side of that page). they are free and offer uncompressed 10-bit, which will give you more colors and less banding.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Todd Heyman]

wonderful. thanks darby and kevin.. its so much more manageable and dimensional than spotlight. haven’t been able to crush the dark areas into total darkness (great for laying type over) but i’ll figure it out.

i downloaded blackmagic. is their 10 bit uncompressed better than the standard 10 bit uncompressed that I have?

[Kevin Camp]

you have the fcp version..? actually it doesn’t matter, it should be the same quality and same number of colors….

just and fyi, the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit colors: 8-bit has 256 different levels per channel, 10-bit has something like 1024. so it is reasonably substantial…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Todd Heyman]

thanks kevin. you’ve been really helpful

[Bram Van workum]

Hi, I am having a similar problem with a Element 3D tutorial. I’m using a light over a camera layer which in turn is over a mask layer and last but not least the gray solid. The ring banding is caused by the mask layer. Cant figure out whats causing it. adding certain effects or re-setting to 16bt per channel doesnt help. I havent tried a new Codec though. I’m working on a new PC with premiere and after effects 5.5