Hello!
I've been making a few scenes that use colour gradients and blurs. When i exported the final scenes (1920 x 1080 HD uncompressed mov, millions of colours) everything seemed to look nice and smooth. However when I watched it back on a friends computer and on a TV, the gradients and blurs are no longer smooth, instead they appear as bands of colour.
I'm making this for broadcast standards and hence im a bit worried about these colour bands.
I've read somewhere that anime pro exports 8 bit colour? Is this the problem? Can i change it to a higher colour bit depth?
If anyone has a clue, that would be marvelous.
Cheers,
Bisagaboooo
bad looking gradients. change colour bit depth?
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
I don't think that will matter 32 bit depth has little support as yet when I export 32 bit depth from my editing app I have trouble with playback sometimes so I have to go back to 8 .
I have not seen banding from that even if I haven't boosted the data rate as much as possible when rendering for DVD.
I expect slotiger will post about this he is pretty cluey about this kind of stuff.
I am interested in this also.
Have you converted the format at all to get it onto TV via DVD ?
I have not seen banding from that even if I haven't boosted the data rate as much as possible when rendering for DVD.
I expect slotiger will post about this he is pretty cluey about this kind of stuff.
I am interested in this also.
Have you converted the format at all to get it onto TV via DVD ?
As long as you have PNG images in 24bit RGB (8bit per channel) on your computer, everything should be fine. The trouble starts with compressing the image/video.
All lossy codecs not only reduce the resolution of the image (thus you loose details) but also the colour depth. If you stumble over a term like "4:2:2", you have found the information about how much certain channels of the image are compressed. Since we deal with video here, these channels are not RGB but Y, R-Y, B-Y. The Quantel Digital factbook says:
Now different video codecs deal differently with colour, and there's another bunch of variables if you transfer digital video to any video tape format, be it analogue or digital. To compensate for this, video post production houses like to work with 32 or 48 bit colour which gives them more headroom for conversion in any direction: they perform their magic on your material with shifting dark parts into a more visible area, increase or decrease saturation of certain colours, and so on. The end result should look good on a TV screen.
But I can't tell you how to avoid banding. I assume it has been a very unfortunate combination of codecs and compression which degenerated your colour information. As long as you use PNG files or QT with PNG compression (max quality), you should be on the safe side. Any decent postpro facility should be able to turn this into a broadcast quality tape. If in doubt, check with them. Take the scene in question and ask for a test at their place.
All lossy codecs not only reduce the resolution of the image (thus you loose details) but also the colour depth. If you stumble over a term like "4:2:2", you have found the information about how much certain channels of the image are compressed. Since we deal with video here, these channels are not RGB but Y, R-Y, B-Y. The Quantel Digital factbook says:
In other words: the bit depth of the colour channels is lesser than the bit depth of the brightness channel, which means you get fewer different colours to distribute.4:2:2
A ratio of sampling frequencies used to digitize the luminance and color difference
components(Y, R-Y, B-Y)of an image signal.The term 4:2:2 denotes that for every four samples of the Y luminance, there are two samples each of R-Y and B-Y, giving less chrominance (color) bandwidth in relation to luminance. This compares with 4:4:4 sampling where full same bandwidth is given to all three channels – in this case usually sampled as RGB.
Now different video codecs deal differently with colour, and there's another bunch of variables if you transfer digital video to any video tape format, be it analogue or digital. To compensate for this, video post production houses like to work with 32 or 48 bit colour which gives them more headroom for conversion in any direction: they perform their magic on your material with shifting dark parts into a more visible area, increase or decrease saturation of certain colours, and so on. The end result should look good on a TV screen.
But I can't tell you how to avoid banding. I assume it has been a very unfortunate combination of codecs and compression which degenerated your colour information. As long as you use PNG files or QT with PNG compression (max quality), you should be on the safe side. Any decent postpro facility should be able to turn this into a broadcast quality tape. If in doubt, check with them. Take the scene in question and ask for a test at their place.
Thanks for the reply people.
Here's exactly what happened/what I did.
As I say, I exported the scene on my PC and everything looked perfect (even the original output from AS). I took the finished scene to my friends place (he's running a Mac) to do a colour grade.
For the colour grade he hooked up his TV to his Mac to get a more accurate indication of how the colour would look. That's when I first noticed the colour bands where the gradients should have been. After I noticed it, I realised that the bands also appeared on his computer monitor. And all this on the original export I braught to his place (ie before the colour grade)
After I came back home I opened the original scene on my PC again and the only way I could replicate the 'banding' was when I changed my display settings from 32bit to 16 bit.
To make things more confusing, with my colour display set to 16 bit i opened a still PNG frame from my scene in photoshop. Again the banding appeared. Then i converted the image from 8bit/channel to 16bit/channel and the banding disappeared.
Oh man Im so confused I think im gonna get a nosebleed.
Anyway, if any of this makes sense, let m eknow, otherwise ignore me.
Thanks guys
Bis
Here's exactly what happened/what I did.
As I say, I exported the scene on my PC and everything looked perfect (even the original output from AS). I took the finished scene to my friends place (he's running a Mac) to do a colour grade.
For the colour grade he hooked up his TV to his Mac to get a more accurate indication of how the colour would look. That's when I first noticed the colour bands where the gradients should have been. After I noticed it, I realised that the bands also appeared on his computer monitor. And all this on the original export I braught to his place (ie before the colour grade)
After I came back home I opened the original scene on my PC again and the only way I could replicate the 'banding' was when I changed my display settings from 32bit to 16 bit.
To make things more confusing, with my colour display set to 16 bit i opened a still PNG frame from my scene in photoshop. Again the banding appeared. Then i converted the image from 8bit/channel to 16bit/channel and the banding disappeared.
Oh man Im so confused I think im gonna get a nosebleed.
Anyway, if any of this makes sense, let m eknow, otherwise ignore me.
Thanks guys
Bis
By the way, if anyone's interested, here's the music video my question applies to.... not that you can see the gradient problem as its a fairly low quality version...
http://www.splicefest.com/peoplepeople.htm
bisagabooooooo
http://www.splicefest.com/peoplepeople.htm
bisagabooooooo
Thanks mate.
Yeah it took a while. 8 weeks, cause I worked on it by my self. I originally anticipated it to take 4 - 5 weeks which seems rediculous now.
Next step is to get it on TV, hence the queries.
I've spent all morning trying to find out what I need to do to supply it to broadcasters in HD. ie. what kind of tape etc. Its all over my head and brain.
Yeah it took a while. 8 weeks, cause I worked on it by my self. I originally anticipated it to take 4 - 5 weeks which seems rediculous now.
Next step is to get it on TV, hence the queries.
I've spent all morning trying to find out what I need to do to supply it to broadcasters in HD. ie. what kind of tape etc. Its all over my head and brain.
No worries. When you hook your tv up to a pc and view something that was 32bit on your tv... the colors are re-adjusted by the graphics card in order for it to be tv safe. It may not display the colors properly on some graphics cards this way.
But if you were to export your animation from AnimeStudio and convert it to DVD format and view it on your dvd player, all would be fine. Below is a tutorial on getting your animation on DVD. It may help you. Even if you don't have a Windows pc and you have a Mac, the settings would be the same on Mac software.
viewtopic.php?p=31809#31809
But if you were to export your animation from AnimeStudio and convert it to DVD format and view it on your dvd player, all would be fine. Below is a tutorial on getting your animation on DVD. It may help you. Even if you don't have a Windows pc and you have a Mac, the settings would be the same on Mac software.
viewtopic.php?p=31809#31809
This might not be applicable in this situation but banding on "standard" TV playback (not HD) is often due to dynamic range. I use to see this a lot on TV shows that had very very dark scenes. There was limited dynamic range so there would be horrible banding in shadowed areas. Even on big budget TV shows like Law and Order, or CSI, dark scenes on the STANDARD broadcast signal would have huge chunky banding of gradations in extreme scenes with bright lights in shadowy dark rooms, or when one scene fades to black, right at the end very noticeable banding. This drove me crazy.
Interesting though was that banding wasn't visible watching a DVD of the same program or movie. It may have to do with digital broadcasting limitations. I don't know exactly. I do know that HD programming never has banding and so many shows are HD now I don't see it much.
-vern
Interesting though was that banding wasn't visible watching a DVD of the same program or movie. It may have to do with digital broadcasting limitations. I don't know exactly. I do know that HD programming never has banding and so many shows are HD now I don't see it much.
-vern
You're correct. Digital signals have been used by cable for some time now. It's the compression they used which was really bad with shadows and darker areas. This bothered me pretty bad about 8 years ago when I got one of those digital boxes from my cable company.heyvern wrote:Interesting though was that banding wasn't visible watching a DVD of the same program or movie. It may have to do with digital broadcasting limitations.
-vern
From what I've read, over-the-air HD signals are much better then cable or satellite. As it seems they still compress them. Now this is from what I've read on the net from a few users. I don't have HD yet.
Sounds like the friend's Mac wasn't set for "millions of colors".
To get your stuff ready for broadcast, you'll need to find out what delivery medium is required (from the broadcasters). DigiBeta is still fairly common. If it's HD, HDCAM or HDCAM SR are fairly common. Really, though, you need to find out from the boradcaster(s) what they want.
Once you've found this out, you'll output the animation (probably what you have already is good), take it to a post production house, or video dub firm (video duplication). So, this is most likely a Quicktime file on a CD (or DVD-but NOT authored, just the QT file-which won't play on a TV as it is). They'll put it in a computer, then record the whole thing onto whatever tape format you want. Give that tape to the TV station, and you're all done.
-dm
To get your stuff ready for broadcast, you'll need to find out what delivery medium is required (from the broadcasters). DigiBeta is still fairly common. If it's HD, HDCAM or HDCAM SR are fairly common. Really, though, you need to find out from the boradcaster(s) what they want.
Once you've found this out, you'll output the animation (probably what you have already is good), take it to a post production house, or video dub firm (video duplication). So, this is most likely a Quicktime file on a CD (or DVD-but NOT authored, just the QT file-which won't play on a TV as it is). They'll put it in a computer, then record the whole thing onto whatever tape format you want. Give that tape to the TV station, and you're all done.
-dm
Digital TV sucks.
Digital broadcast HD sucks too.
The artifacts, banding, etc. are really annoying (in the USA, anyway). I can't stand digital projection either. It's a shame so many are so willing to accept a lesser quality of media, and yet think it's better. (because "Digital" is advertised as being better-even if it's demonstrably not)
-dm
Digital broadcast HD sucks too.
The artifacts, banding, etc. are really annoying (in the USA, anyway). I can't stand digital projection either. It's a shame so many are so willing to accept a lesser quality of media, and yet think it's better. (because "Digital" is advertised as being better-even if it's demonstrably not)
-dm
Hi bisagaboo.
Love your clip!!!! Can I offer you some advice from experience?....I supply TVC's in digital mpg2 format for Facting but most stations here want copies on Digital Beta tape for broadcast. Foxtel can dub copies to HD at their studios and I'm sure most production houses are up to scratch to by now. Also, DB tapes can get darn expensive supplying copies to every station. Expensive depending on how many stations you intend getting it aired on.
Here's a checklist
If you're going to broadcast this clip all stations require clapper boards, key numbers, facting, colour luminosity correction, colour correction and audio compliance tagged on all clips. It's a major PITA believe me i've had years of it.
A friend of mine recently paid $2000.00 to produce a music video (no animation) I offered to do it for him but he wanted to organise it and produce it himself. The finished produc was knocked back by every channel he sent it to.
As long as you follow the broadcasters rules, no probs.
Cheers
D.K
Love your clip!!!! Can I offer you some advice from experience?....I supply TVC's in digital mpg2 format for Facting but most stations here want copies on Digital Beta tape for broadcast. Foxtel can dub copies to HD at their studios and I'm sure most production houses are up to scratch to by now. Also, DB tapes can get darn expensive supplying copies to every station. Expensive depending on how many stations you intend getting it aired on.
Here's a checklist
If you're going to broadcast this clip all stations require clapper boards, key numbers, facting, colour luminosity correction, colour correction and audio compliance tagged on all clips. It's a major PITA believe me i've had years of it.
A friend of mine recently paid $2000.00 to produce a music video (no animation) I offered to do it for him but he wanted to organise it and produce it himself. The finished produc was knocked back by every channel he sent it to.
As long as you follow the broadcasters rules, no probs.
Cheers
D.K