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Rendering Gradients in After Effects
Hi everybody,
I’m currently working on a project where I used several gradients in the background (I know not the best idea, but they look so nice). I created my project in 16bit and quite obviously the result, when rendering it in H264 8 bit, was devastating. OK … Gradients that look nice in 16 bit don’t look nice in 8 bit – I might have thought about that in the beginning but anyway …
I turned my project to 8 bit, changed all the values, added some noise and got a decent result again: at least in my AE viewport. But here comes the clue: When rendering it (even with a high bitrate into a H264 file) the ugly steps in the gradient reappeared. Using a 8bit png sequence solved the problem but as the video is going to be uploaded to vimeo etc I can’t rely on that.
I really think I’m lacking some concept here: If those steps in the gradients don’t result from the fewer nuances in 8bit pictures and turning up the bitrate in H264 won’t do a thing, how can I get rid of them.
Please don’t tell me not to use any gradients, I know that this would be the easier way, but there has to be some solution to this!
Greez, Lisa
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4 Replies
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Here is what you can try:
Export 16 bit AE project as 16 bit TIFF sequence. Add some noise (aaround 0.3 will do fine) to every frame in Photoshop. Convert 16 bit TIFFs to 8 bit TIFFs in Photoshop. Import new sequence into AE and render the project as H.264 movie.
PS: You can record an action for converting 16 bit TIFF files to 8 bit, add noise, save as new files.
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Nice Idea and it works as far as to the point where I have the 8bit tiffs (it also works if you just export 8bit tiffs directly from After Effects). The tiffs or pngs always look fine. BUT as soon as I render it as an H264 the ugly steps reappear!
I seem to be making some mistake when rendering it as a an H264. I’m rendering directly from After Effects (tried Premiere too, but it doesn’t make any difference), where I’m using the native renderer which I set to H264, Millions of Colors, Profile Main, Level 5.1 and even 50 Mbps, Multiplexer MP4.
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H.264 is not the best codec if you want to preserve quality and detail. It also greatly depends on your nitrate settings.
Why don’t you attach a couple rendered frames in 8 bit TIF format? I’ll see if any trick can be done.
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Unfortunately I can’t attach pictures.
But turning to a different codec somehow improved the problem. Thanks for your help anyway!
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