Gradient Rings

chromeboy007

chromeboy007

Well-known member
Hi guys,

I imported various grey'ish mid tone gradients in jpg and png formats into Premiere. The gradients look great in jpg and pgn but once I put them on the time line they form these rings - like one distinct colour after another after another. I imported them to Final Cut but its the same thing. Is there anything I can do to preserve the smoothness of the vector outputs? I even dragged them onto different HD format timelines (DVCPRO HD, XDCAM's, HDV), the rings differ slightly but they all look bad.

I have been exporting the videos to mp4 at around 5 to 8 mbps - no use.

Thanks

Premiere CS4, Final Cut Pro 5, iMac 2010
 
'Maximum Bit Depth' looks great on the timeline, but once exported to mp4 or f4v the rings are still there. The higher the bitrate the finer and more precise the rings are.
 
Did you check Maximum Render Quality as well?

The problem is due to the nature of an 8-bit codec. It will naturally create bands such as that. You can try befuddling it a little by adding a small amount of animated noise to the jpg. That should break up the banding some.
 
You'll need to dither the image since you are compressing to an 8-bit 4:2:0 format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither#Examples

A professional can help you dither your image without destroying detail. There are no plugins built into premiere that will help with this other than adding noise to the image (which will destroy some detail and require more bitrate to keep a solid image)
 
It's not. It's in a 64-bit platform.

But that doesn't matter; an 8-bit codec is still an 8-bit codec no matter what platform you're on.
 
chromeboy007 said:
Hi guys,

I imported various grey'ish mid tone gradients in jpg and png formats into Premiere. The gradients look great in jpg and pgn but once I put them on the time line they form these rings - like one distinct colour after another after another. I imported them to Final Cut but its the same thing. Is there anything I can do to preserve the smoothness of the vector outputs? I even dragged them onto different HD format timelines (DVCPRO HD, XDCAM's, HDV), the rings differ slightly but they all look bad.

I have been exporting the videos to mp4 at around 5 to 8 mbps - no use.

Thanks

Premiere CS4, Final Cut Pro 5, iMac 2010
Click to expand...

If you are exporting full frame HD, at 5 to 8 mbps, you are 'way' under the minimum required for 'good representation'. Broadcast HDTV is on the order of 20 Mbits/s and Blueray has a higer max of 40 Mbits/s...

5-8 will get you SD spatial and color resolution...

That's independent of the suggestions for using deeper bit depth representations such as 16 or 24. 8 bits truncates 'immediate'... then low bit rate figures into even worse.

Where I've seen this sort of problem mostly is in 'slow transitions', that sort of 'flutter' as they fade out, due to the low bit depth, and worse with low bitrate.
 
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