[Ted Cox]

[Jeremy Garchow] “How did you make the still frame and what format is it?”

I used FCPX’s Share “Save Current Frame” on the original 4K clip outputting to TIFF format.

Thanks, everyone for your thoughts and assistance. Joe was quite correct. In the end, it was a function of underexposed 8-bit footage breaking down due to the addition of the blur. Using FCPX’s “Add Noise” function, I was able to add 0.02% blue noise and eliminate the banding. ☺ The noise is visible, but not distracting, and the shot looks so much better!

[Ted Cox]

Thanks so much for the help and clarifications, Joe. This has been really enlightening.

I hope your field assignment goes well.

[Ted Cox]

Thanks, Joe.

[Joe Marler] “The first frames you posted were in a flat or log profile. The exposure had been “de-flattened” and the histogram stretched. This was done by something besides simple tracker.”

I’m not sure I understand. When you say the “first frames” I take it you mean the first two screen grabs I posted. One of the viewed while adding my tracked item to the SimpleTracker plugin. In this frame, both images, the before and after are flat. The second is the final image after color correction (using Apple’s Color Board). Is that color correction step what you’re referencing? Or are you saying it looks like something strange was done with the original flat footage?

[Joe Marler] “Do you know for certain that if this was exported without simple tracker it would look OK, or would it also have banding?”

Now we’re on to something! I exported the Compound Clip prior to adding it to SimpleTracker and… it HAS banding. I’m not sure why the viewer shows a higher quality imagine than I get on a final export (I’m sharing as a Master File -> ProRes 422LT in this case). But that’s helpful to know.

So that eliminates CoreMelt, or my misusage of CoreMelt as the source of the problem. I can totally accept that the trouble is the source footage breaking down. You suggested adding some noise to try to dither the banding. Any other suggestions? Any neat tricks to get what I’m seeing in the viewer to actually export?

[Ted Cox]

Just for clarity here’s some detail screenshots.

The source image has no banding:

After adding FCP’s Draw Mask and Gaussian Blur, there’s still no banding:

After putting a Compound Clip of the above into the SimpleTracker plugin, the banding immediately appears:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to blame CoreMelt. My assumption is that I’m doing something wrong. I’m just not having in luck figuring out what it is. 🙂

[Ted Cox]

[Jeremy Garchow] “And have you tried rendering or exporting the composite as ProRes? You could be looking at a preview and not final render.”

Yes. The “finished” screenshot is from a ProRes 4444 Master export reimported back into my timeline. (The core melt tools drag my computer to a crawl, so I baked the composite for performance reasons.)

[Ted Cox]

Hey Oliver,

Thanks for replying.

[Oliver Peters] “Also, what are you doing the color correction with?”

The FCP Color Board effect. However, as noted above, the banding appears BEFORE the color correction is added.

[Ted Cox]

Hey Joe,

Thanks for replying. It’s 4K native footage in a 4K project. All the media is ProRes. Most is ProRes 422 LT. For the baked composite I’ve been exporting a master file in ProRes 4444.

[Ted Cox]

I’m referring to the jagged transition lines between colors on the girls face and head scarf. They look almost like a topographical map. Is there a better term to describe those?

[Ted Cox]

Hey Joe,

I wish I had a better answer for you. Unfortunately, I’m still in the same boat. There is a very long “Serious Error” thread over on the adobe forums, but honestly, it’s so long at this point Adobe tech support has said they don’t have time to read through it?!? So, I think we’re on our own.

In terms of my project, I had reasonable success with the following work around:

-Do the following as soon as your project launches — do not wait for Adobe to cache all your files
-If you’re using Hardware Mecury playback turn it off. If you’re not using it, turn it on.
-The system will then ask if you want to delete existing previews. Delete them all.
-Rerender everything. (Yeah, I know).

In my experience this would usually buy me another .5-1.5 days of editing without a serious error. My testing indicates it has nothing to do with MPE (since the issue manifests without CUDA even installed), but may have something to do with how corrupted previews.

Ted

[Ted Cox]

Hey Kevin,

Thanks for your reply.

Both MB an Neat were used very late in this particular project, after the errors had already started. We actually didn’t own licenses for either until very recently, so previous projects (that have also suffered from the serious error issues) were done without the software even installed.