It's also possible it's not really there. Some (most?) LCDs have problems with gradients. The Dell 2407 is really bad and it's caught me out more than once. There should be a way to measure banding with scopes, Glenn?
Bob.

ok heres a avi at 30 fps dropped into vegas 8
rendered at 30 fps avi no FX applied at all.

http://www.gigpc.net/color%20bands.avi

Auggy

Looking at it I'm not certain where I should be looking. On both my LCD and CRT it looks OK. The only place I can see any issue is in the white glow behind the end of the blue scroll. It's so trivial you've got to look pretty hard to notice it though. I can't feed NTSC through my current D->A converter so it's being resampled as it goes to the CRT though.
Looking accross white area on the front of the sign using a mask and the scopes there are areas that jump between 108% and 109% which could, maybe just appear as bands on some displays.

Bob.

Played it back with Nero on my LCD monitor and there is "0" banding.

JJK

Maybe you are talking about chroma subsampling artifacts?

To avoid them, either:
A- Use a less subsampled format if you can.
B- If you must render to something like DV (4:1:1), then apply chroma blur to everything... e.g. video preview FX level.
You'd need to check the output on a broadcast monitor. The chroma siting might be a little off.. e.g. the chroma might be slightly shifted to the right. I believe it's possible to fix that.

There should be a way to measure banding with scopes, Glenn?
The best thing to do would be to look at footage on a proper monitor.

I think there are situations where Vegas' scopes won't show banding issues that are in the image.

Or you can have situations where there is banding, but visually it is not a problem.

guys,
look closley at the red letters. I see some banding going on that is not present when I play back the animation directly. When I say no banding I mean on my lcd.

Now when vegas renders the project there is banding and it is as present on my hd dlp samsung 42 inch as it is on the 22 inch NEC lcd monitor.

Sometimes I notice a more severe banding when the same bright reds are present like in a christmas program I taped last dec. Alot of teachers and kids wearing bright red and it was very visible.

I'll try to grab some short footage of that and link that as well.

Anyhow, look closely at the red letters on the marquee and I believe you will see it.

Sincerely,

Auggy

That's probably artifacts from chroma subsampling, not banding. To check, try rendering to a format that doesn't use chroma subsampling... e.g. uncompressed (not SonyYUV or 4:2:2), Quicktime photoJPEG at 100% quality, etc. etc.

What's your delivery format(s)?

Oh, THAT!

Glenn has nailed it. It's most noticeable in the thinner letters of the "Showtimes". You might be able to improve the situation by changing things in the CGI source, avoid the direct red to white transition by adding a very small yellow glow around the red letters. Also make certain the red isn't outside the legal gamut.
But apart from that and what Glenn has said there's not a whole lot you can do in general. We shot something some time ago and I just wasn't thinking on the day. The schoolchildren were wearing blue shirts with dayglo red vests, marching ants on the transition from red to blue.
With these kinds of problems even how the player is connected to the TV will make a difference. A basic A/V hookup that feeds composite video to the TV highlights these problems.

Bob.

Speaking of Dayglo, (I worked there) the lab said at the time there was no instrument that could measure luminescense and there was no monitor that could view it properly. All the quality control was done visually against master chips. The primary ingredient being isophoronediamine. (spelling?)
JJK

Glenn,
bring that my dell laptop core 2 duo and my own built q6600 (both on xp) have MAJOR issues with quicktime I don't bother with it.

Is there another format I could use?

Aug

What's your delivery formats?

Glenn, I'm not sure what you mean...
"Del formats".

I simply render and these rendered files are used to build the DVD for the wedding client.

I don't do any broadcast work if thats what you mean.

I scratch my head with QT because I find that 2 machines I own have the EXACT same problem with windows xp and one is a dell and one built by me.

Perhaps it's a program conflicting?

Does anyone else have problems playing quicktime files online.

Aug

Your answer to the question that Glenn was asking is therefore NTSC SD DVD, that's your delivery format.
If you've shot HDV you would get some improvement by encoding from HDV to SD mpeg-2 directly. If you render to SD DV and then SD mpeg-2 you're going from HDV's 4:2:0 to NTSC's 4:1:1 and from that to mpeg-2's 4:2:0 chroma sampling, not good.
On the other hand going directly from HDV to SD mpeg-2 you're going from 4:2:0 to 4:2:0.
Your CGI is most likely 4:4:4 so again going directly from that to 4:2:0 would help to some extent. However even with PALs 4:2:0 reds can be problematic, especially text.

Bob.

You might try the "cineform HD codec v2.8" with the relevant frame size (e.g. 720x480 or whatever is appropriate for you).

It will handle the chroma slightly differently than other codecs, which might be slightly helpful.

Your most gain would be avoiding 4:1:1 NTSC DV.

2- You are still limited by the chroma subsampling used by the DVD format.

There are two flavours of 4:2:0... interlaced and progressive. If you have a 24p or 30p final product, then encode progressive (it's one of the settings in the main concept encoder that comes with vegas) and this will use the progressive chroma.

If you need to encode the DVD with interlaced 4:2:0 chroma, then you might run into these subtle issues:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_8_2/dvd-benchmark-special-report-chroma-bug-4-2001.html
In that articles it's the "interlaced chroma problem". Viewers on large non-CRT displays might notice that saturated reds look a little screwed up.
Workarounds would be applying some chroma blur, maybe blurring out the reds slightly, and/or lowering their saturation.

In any case, burn your final product and play it on a DVD player and see if it looks good. (You're going to do quality control on your final product anyways right?)

I am looking into cineform because I hate 29.97.

anyhow, I'm going to assume that my two machines are QT incompatible due to software somewhere in my machines.

Aug

If you're shooting HDV and only outputting to mpeg-2 for SD DVD you don't need to get involved with CF or QT. Sounds to me like you're piling complexity onto problem leading to the creating of potentially even more problems.

Bob.