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View Full Version : Banding issues when colour grading using HDV footage



visceralpsyche
08-07-2006, 08:32 AM
I am colour grading my second short film right now and am running into the problem of using 4:2:0 footage from the camera (JVC GY-HD101E), captured at 1280x720x25p.

Having edited the film in PPro 2, and now trying to grade it in AE7, the problem occurs that when applying a vignette filter to the footage it results in pretty obvious (to my eyes anyway) banding issues, like there isn't enough colour channel bit depth to generate a smooth transition.

Now, I know that this is of course the issue with using 4:2:0 footage. My question is, is there a way to internally upsample the footage prior to exporting it to 4:4:4 (for example) so that colour grading it doesn't lead to banding issues like those described?

Or another way to ask the question would be, how do I take footage shot via HDV MPEG2 and convert it to a higher bit depth across all channels, so that subsequent editing etc is as lossless as possible from there on in? I know the limitations of the original capture can't be overcome, but beyond that I don't want to suffer further degradation such as the banding that is showing up on gradient filters, vignettes etc.

Thanks!

graymachine
08-07-2006, 10:06 AM
Are you working in 32-bit Float?

visceralpsyche
08-07-2006, 10:44 AM
I knew there had to be an easy fix... :)

Cheers, that fixed it!

In case anyone else needs the fix, go into Project Settings, switch from 8bit colour to 32bit Colour (Float), THEN import your footage etc.

Much obliged, graymachine.