Are you guys aware of the color banding in your videos?

[iLikeBananas]

I see this in quite a lot of LTT videos. The darker areas look strange. Now I am not really into video editing, and I only know about this from a Reddit thread, so I don't really know if this is something you can't avoid or even want but it looks strange to me.

[NineEyeRon]

Wikipedia seems to suggest Colour banding is a display issue and not from the source video

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_banding

[Spotty]

Don't get @TaranLMG talking about colour... Poor guy seems to be having a hard enough time as it is (see Taran's recent YouTube videos)

 

This might just be YouTube compression issues? If anyone has access to floatplane they might be able to compare the scenes and see if it's an issue with the video or YouTube issue. Looking at that image posted it's really not that noticeable though (on my screens at least). 

 

Just now, VegetableStu said:

can't even tell on my phone at normal scale, LOL

Saw it on my computer screen earlier and it was slightly noticeable, but on phone now and can only see it when I zoom in and really look for it.

[Mira Yurizaki]

It's likely due to the processing and output settings of the video. I recall there's a encoding profile for H.264 (and likely H.265) that uses 10-bit per color channel to minimize color banding. You don't need a 10-bit per color monitor to view it, the video player will just downsample it.

 

So not sure if they're using said profile or not or if YouTube's re-encoding (I'm pretty sure that's a thing) is dumb.

[Drak3]

It's most likely Youtube's compression, not an editting issue.

[iLikeBananas]

It could be a youtube issue to be honest. Because I looked up other pictures right now to make sure it's not an issue with my screen. One of you guys happen to have a link to a youtube video with similar dark parts?

[Columbus]

I bet it's because of YouTube transcoding. I see the same issue on a lot of different channels. Only solution I know is to have a debanding filter on playback (which is only possible with an external player like mpv).

 

Edit: I checked out some Floatplane videos and it seems they suffer from the same issue, however to a much lesser degree.

[flibberdipper]

I have a strong feeling it's YouTube doing what it does best. I've uploaded shit where the source file is more or less fine (considering the bitrates) but the YT encode has noticeable color banding.

[BrinkGG]

36 minutes ago, iLikeBananas said:

It could be a youtube issue to be honest. Because I looked up other pictures right now to make sure it's not an issue with my screen. One of you guys happen to have a link to a youtube video with similar dark parts?

I'm almost positive this is youtube compression lowering bit depth on dark parts or your display. 

 

30 minutes ago, Columbus said:

I bet it's because of YouTube transcoding. I see the same issue on a lot of different channels. Only solution I know is to have a debanding filter on playback (which is only possible with an external player like mpv). Or maybe Floatplane uploads don't have this issue, IDK.

If someone wants to send me a timestamp of a youtube video with this color banding issue, I'll screenshot 4k YT and 1080p floatplane and see if it looks better.

[Columbus]

1 minute ago, Brink2Three said:

If someone wants to send me a timestamp of a youtube video with this color banding issue, I'll screenshot 4k YT and 1080p floatplane and see if it looks better. 

You can find it in a lot of videos. Also, I have just subscribed to floatplane and I'm kinda surprised it doesn't have 4K. I really wish there was more info about it.

[TetraSky]

1 minute ago, Columbus said:

You can find it in a lot of videos. Also, I have just subscribed to floatplane and I'm kinda surprised it doesn't have 4K. I really wish there was more info about it.

About that, I think they said something like "our 1080p look as good or better than Youtube's 4k" to justify not having 4k yet. But it will likely be coming soon.

[Guest]

Pretty sure it has to do with the compression, not with the video itself. Because I see that in pretty much all videos, even MKBHD ones, and those are surely made well.

[BrinkGG]

Just now, Columbus said:

You can find it in a lot of videos. Also, I have just subscribed to floatplane and I'm kinda surprised it doesn't have 4K. I really wish there was more info about it.

So that one I can explain: 

"4k" and "1080p" on streaming services isn't actually a measurement of resolution, it's usually measuring the bitrate. 

iirc, Youtube bitrates are 1080p30 is around 8-10Mb/s, 1080p60 is around 14-16Mb/s, 1440p is around 22-25Mb/s, and 4k is 38-44Mb/s. 

I THINK floatplane's 1080p30 is is around 25Mb/s for bitrate... So the same bitrate as about YT 1440p. @Slick or any of the Floatplane team would be able to confirm that. 

You ALSO have to take into account the compression algorithm used for each service. (I think youtube's is called YT7 or something like that?) Youtube's compression is good, but I would really argue that Floatplane's 1080p option looks as good or better then youtube's 4k option. 

[Columbus]

I mean, 4K on YT is actually 4k resolution and 1080p is 1080p. Obviously bitrate matters but usually on streaming websites highest res also means highest bitrate.

Also IDK if they actually use some compression aside of their codec (which is vp9 but they probably also have legacy AVC streams). Floatplane uses x264 with some questionable settings.

[Origami Cactus]

@Columbus @TetraSky The information i have about the youtube floatplane 4k issue is that they didn't actually upload 4k videos to youtube. They uploaded 1080p videos with very high bitrate and they hid it is "4k", so that they could upload the video at a better bitrate. But since they got their 8k camera i don't know if it is still the case.

[ShredBird]

Two things:

1: Your Display:  If your display is not calibrated or wide enough gamut (or not true 8-bit) it may not be able to reproduce the correct black, white or gamma curves in between and you may experience banding.  Even with a calibrated display, unless it's a studio quality reference display (very very expensive) you may still see some banding.

2: Compression:  Compression takes advantage of the fact that portions of the image are similar.  It will purposefully limit the colorspace and approximate colors as the same to save space.  You may still notice artifacts and banding on a calibrated display if the video is using very lossy compression.  YouTube is definitely trying to keep bandwidth down, so you can bet it's pretty lossy.

What you can do:

1. Calibrate Your Display:  There are some online tools that can help you set the brightness, contrast and gamma levels and get an "eyeball" correct display.  Most displays come with garbage settings out of the box that attempt to artificially stretch the dynamic range of the color space, this will cause banding.  If you really want good results, invest in a colorimeter.

2. Increase the Bitrate:  Even if you don't have a 4K display, watching YouTube at the 4K setting will result in a better looking image.  Extra pixels get averaged using a high quality filter down to the resolution you're viewing at.  This provides a supersampling effect and effectively contains more data per pixel than the 1080p setting.  I notice a lot of banding with 1080p video on YouTube.  With 4K viewing on a 1440p monitor, the problem is nearly non-existent.