[Jack Parnel]

I’ve done two tests, one where i took a segment of the original pro-res 4444 and added grain in after effects, exporting under its animation preset and then going to 5000kb/s h264 in compressor.

and another where i took the same segment of the pro-res 4444 and compressed it to 8bit in compressor.

The 8 bit had noticeable banding however considerably less then what im used to seeing with my low bit rate h264’s. i guess id consider this an acceptable level.

and the clip i’d added grain too looked a whole lot better in h264 then the equivalent conversion without grain, however not quite as good as the 8bit

i should add that i don’t have the origial fcp file and scratch disk for this film. just the pro-res 4444 that i exported from fcp and color. although im considering getting my hands back on it and starting from the top again. maybe add grain in color and export as a 10bit? then dumb it down?

[Jack Parnel]

I’m using the h264 for viewing on my website. Preferably through vimeo.

I’ve read that adding grain to the image can help reduce the banding, im experimenting with that rite now. There is actually one section of the film that was worked on by a compositor, who i believe added a small amount of grain to the image, and as a result the banding in this sequence is very minimal compared to the rest. Is this something that will work? i’d obviously prefer to solve this in a way that doesn’t involve degrading the image though.