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Ugly graphical "effect" in backgrounds (Color Banding)

#1
I couldn't check if this has been discussed before since i don't know what it's called, but as an example, look at this picture

Picture

Look in the upper right part of the picture above the planet, and where the thruster "tail" effect ends, these "seams" are pretty ugly, i hope Josh plans to fix that, i see it in every dev update video.

In fact if you look at the very background image for this forum you'll see it all over that picture too :(
Last edited by Rabcor on Tue Oct 08, 2013 3:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
This is where the cat is from and yes you should definitely watch that.
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Re: Ugly graphical "effect" in backgrounds

#4
I think he's talking about the color banding.

That's a classic artifact of compression and is one of the first artifacts to be visible, especially in dark / low-contrast regions. The compression is especially bad in the update videos because the video is obviously much more compressed than still images.

But! It doesn't look like that in the game ;)
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Ugly graphical "effect" in backgrounds (Color Banding)

#6
Yes, the color banding is definitely due to compression and conversion (youtube's most likely).

I can attest that there is no such banding in game (at least in the prototype) -- unless Josh purposely added it to fuck with you all. :lol:

As a side note, Josh, how big are you monthly update videos usually? Is it something that you might be able to release as a torrent simultaneously (or after the youtube upload) so we can get non-artifacting variant?
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Ugly graphical "effect" in backgrounds (Color Banding)

#7
DWMagus wrote:Yes, the color banding is definitely due to compression and conversion (youtube's most likely).

I can attest that there is no such banding in game (at least in the prototype) -- unless Josh purposely added it to fuck with you all. :lol:

As a side note, Josh, how big are you monthly update videos usually? Is it something that you might be able to release as a torrent simultaneously (or after the youtube upload) so we can get non-artifacting variant?
I'm actually not even sure how to produce an artifact-free variant. Even before sending to YT I can see the banding. It seems to be a result of rendering to the H264 codec that I'm using (although I think YT does exacerbate the problem).

If anyone knows a lot about HD codecs and would like to suggest a better one for rendering to, I'm all ears :)
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Ugly graphical "effect" in backgrounds (Color Banding)

#9
Trying to be helpful even if i may not know much about encoding or codecs, but i know that "MPEG4/H.264" also known as "AVC" compression standard is what is used by all the highest quality video files i have seen (except of course for completely uncompressed). The files also tend to use the Matroska (mkv) format, although i'm not sure what the benefit of that is, but when i knew less about the subject when i was looking for quality video files i sniffed out the ones in the mkv format for the best results a few years ago.

The profile the very best quality files tend to use is (quoting wikipedia)
High 10 Profile (Hi10P)
Going beyond typical mainstream consumer product capabilities, this profile builds on top of the High Profile, adding support for up to 10 bits per sample of decoded picture precision.
Also known as 10-bit Encoding. However a capable media player is required to play these files and from what i've seen only the most up-to-date media players are compatible with the profile (i haven't seen a video editor that can handle it yet, however i haven't tried many) players that support it include Media Player Classic (with the right codec pack, i use K-Lite), Mplayer2 and VLC.

Use 10-bit encoded H264 files for maximum quality vs compression rate. Also to be noted is that 10-bit encoded files tend to be smaller than the traditional 8-bit ones. I can also guess that changing the resolution of the video may cause this effect.

To be noted is the Hi444P profile which supports 14-bit encoding, however i have not seen it in use and because of that i do assume that the support for that is extremely limited.

That's all the advice i can give on the subject of video quality as a quality freak (as a "quality freak", the media player/renderer i prefer is Media Player Classic with MadVR renderer and LAV filters, my alternative on linux is Mplayer2 with OpenGL renderer, i refuse to touch VLC and consider it little more than an ugly relic with decent amount of codec support).

Update:
Image If this is correct the 10-bit encoding i mentioned is what is needed to get rid of the artifact. I wonder why the effect is in the wallpaper though.. did you take the screenshot from a video rather than actually in-game?
This is where the cat is from and yes you should definitely watch that.
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Re: Ugly graphical "effect" in backgrounds (Color Banding)

#12
SMplayer is a GUI frontend for Mplayer, Mplayer itself doesn't come with any UI, it's just a window that plays videos and i think it also has some key-bound commands but i forgot.

I use "SMPlayer2" on linux, which is a GUI frontend for Mplayer2 developed by a different developer than the other SMPlayer. I'm not sure if SMplayer supports Mplayer2 or not. Mplayer2 is not to be confused with Mplayer, Mplayer2 is a fork of Mplayer with a few enhancements. Mplayer2 is no longer being updated however in favor of Mpv which is a new player (i only found out about it just now while looking for links to help me explain this. Interesting, there's a new player in the game and i've gotta see if it's worthy). Here's a comparison for Mplayer -> Mplayer2 -> Mpv

Looking at it, Mpv seems to wreck Mplayer and Mplayer2 judging by the changes list i linked. So many improvements! it even has Wayland support which is a big plus for linux users. There is no GUI frontend for it atm, but Cmplayer, a player developed by some korean person uses mpv as a playback backend. CMplayer does not seem to support windows but i have seen a windows release somewhere on google, it may be that a 3rd party made it windows compatible but i wouldn't trust it.

But as a cross-platform player then yes Mplayer, Mplayer2 & Mpv work on windows too of course! :mrgreen: good of you to point that out Katawa.

I tried comparing VLC to K-Lite again, although still not as good as k-lite it doess seem to be catching up in the graphics quality area. VLC now seems to support allowing users to select the playback output driver in a similar way as Mplayer/Smplayer and now supports much better renderers than it did before(only its own obsolete and ugly renderer), but it takes forever to load certain files which k-lite will open immediately and it will also refuse to play certain files which k-lite will play without problems. I think VLC is comparable to Mplayer2 now in quality though, at least on windows (haven't tested in linux but it'll be interesting to compare it to mpv in there) I remember that apart from quality, the other reason why i dropped VLC when i was using it in favor for KLC was because K-Lite was not only giving better quality but also better frame rates. At the time i was using the Haali renderer which is by now not so great next to madVR, but Haali is still the best for low-end computers that can't handle madVR in my opinion. Unfortunately though the Haali and madVR renderers seem to be a windows exclusive deal. Leaving Linux/OS X with not much more than OpenGL and Xrender which truth be told could use a lot of improvement when it comes to quality.
This is where the cat is from and yes you should definitely watch that.
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Re: Ugly graphical "effect" in backgrounds (Color Banding)

#13
I've always assumed that to be compression artifacts, and am glad (but not surprised) to hear that it is.

Basically, a dumbed down explanation is that as you start encoding more information into less space (what we call 'compression'), compression algorithms start considering larger and larger "areas" of the image as having similar color tones, and thus averages out the colors in that region. To be more technical, In areas with a lot of edge detail (textures, edges, clothes), this is almost invisible because humans are much more sensitive to changes in luminance (brightness) compared to changes in chroma (color). However, if the variance in luminance is minimal (as in background, skies, etc), chroma inaccuracy adds up and you see banding and the classic "JPEG artifacts". MPEG (Motion JPEG) videos use a similar encoding scheme, (though MPEG-4 and the H.26x use more advanced algorithms) have the same problems.

See http://philipbloom.net/2013/02/03/canon ... mpression/ for an example.

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