Avoid Banding On YouTube | The Best Export Render Settings, Neat Video, Film Grain
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Enjoy guys, hope you find this helpful 👍 - See comment about 4K on Big Sur. EDIT - Autumn 2021 - My new recommendation for render settings is the HEVC 10-bit mode, it takes forever to render files but they look fantastic!
@scdobserver835
3 жыл бұрын
I think Phillip Bloom did that (add noise) before he uploaded to youtube his A7sIII videos...
I love the way you talk! So clearly and straight to the point with some lovely humor!
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
Many thanks, means a lot 👍🏻
There’s so much time put into this video, thank you!
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
2 жыл бұрын
It was a labour of love for sure 😂 many thanks
Thank you for doing that research so we don't have to. YT is horribly compressing stuff at 1080p, so I even upload non-4K material in 4K just to dupe YT into allocating more bitrate so than tree branches and foliage won't become a blocky blurry mush... But let's face it - YT is hardly making any profit anyway storing geekabytes of useless cat videos and unfunny vlogs about nothing for billions of dollars in storage costs, while still butchering quality. Can't expect that to change until a new compression codec arrives at the scene. And 99% of casual users won't notice anyway
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
Agreed 😏 many thanks, thoughtful stuff
@Speeder84XL
2 жыл бұрын
KZread indeed have to deal with a lot of crap videos. But they make the problem a hell of a lot worse by them self - because they pay creators for view time and not amount of views. So instead of trying to get the creators to use their storage space effectively (by making short videos rich in content), they do the right opposit and really promote those 30+ minute long uncut, bad edited videos with a lot of filled up content (long intros, repetitions of whats coming later in the videos and similar non sense), that really "eats" both storage space and time for the viewers. Then they compress ALL videos (even the short ones) to shit quality to save space. This makes me so frustrated. Especially since I just recently uploaded a new year fire work video that had really nice original quality, but once uploaded on KZread it got insane banding in the sky with huge blocks - the one he show in this video is nothing in comparison. That's why I came here in the first place to see if there is anything to do about it. But, since I have a crap computer where rendering of a 4 k video that's just a few minutes long takes several hours, I don't feel that excited to spend another day rendering the videos again to get files with without noise reduction just for uploading (because I want the noise reduction on the original files that I want to keep), then don't know for shore they will look good anyway (noise also makes the compression less efficient and tend to increase the blurriness and fuzziness of the video) - so I will probably have to deal with the KZread quality at it's worst... They are just living on being the biggest most known platform to upload content. KZread is the first that come up to peoples mind when they want to show videos to the world - even if there is way batter platforms out there. That's why they can treat both creators and viewers like this and get away with it.
@Veganarchy-Zetetic
Жыл бұрын
Watching a 4K video right now and the banding is terrible.
That video was exactly what i was looking for. Thanks
I was going crazy and this video made me feel sane. It's just KZread. A belated thank you!
Try h265 with a higher bitrate like 80Mbs. Be sure to look at the FINAL upload after the 4K is done processing. Don't look at anything below 1080p. The 4K is encoded with vp9 rather than avc1. Noise does nothing as h264 & h256 tends to denoise, and KZread also denoises when transcoding. KZread will prefer storage space over quality, so at some point, there is nothing you can do to fix it. Also... when you watch your videos, be sure the screen is on Standard, and not Dynamic/Movie/Sport. The final thing to look at is your internet connection. Faster connections = better quality. Right-Click your video on YT, and select Stats for Nerds.
@remetremet
2 жыл бұрын
I'm using 4K in h265 at 80Mbps too and it does look good - when played in 4K. When played in lower resolutions... there comes YT compression :-(
@nfrancisj2122
2 жыл бұрын
@@remetremet yea.. sorry. I have the same issue. Trying viewing it on a different monitor... maybe a TV or Ipad. Sometimes it's just your local settings, and the video looks fine elsewhere. There is no real solid solution as KZread will re-enocde your video to save space on their servers.
@remetremet
2 жыл бұрын
@@nfrancisj2122 100% agree. The only solution I found is to switch to 4K even on non-4K displays. The only "problem" is higher CPU and bandwidth use. And ofcourse this assumes that uploaded video is of sufficient quality.
thanks for the comparison! learning more and more about it. This will help!
Thx very informative and I can empathise wth the gruelling tests and QC workaround attempts etc to make it work on youtube. Banding is one of those things that have been a royal pain ever since the analog days and still no great off shelf plugin solutions etc that I am aware of especially low light or pulsing like 'flame' from candle etc.
And I thought my new QLED TV has issues . I mean everything looks amazing on the TV from games in HDR to Netflix , KZread,etc but I did notice in some videos around KZread , specially in dark and sky line banding. Of course this it's rare but I still though my TV could have some issues. I use my TV with my seriesX for everything, gaming, KZread, Netflix,etc and all my settings are done well with correct hdmi black leve and so ON.l
So helpful I was half way through doing these tests as I saw banding and I was trying to work out if it was Neat Noise Reduction or the fact it went from 10 bit to 8 bit etc.. but thanks you did all the work for me :D
Thanks, I’ve tried similar tests and came to a very similar conclusion. PS. 4K support on KZread now in the new Safari on Big Sur.
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
Yes indeed, in my pinned comment 👍🏻
Is this sort of an effect of dithering(adding noise) to smooth banding ?
legend has it that having more subs will compel youtube to let your videos be compressed with the vp09 codec
Very interesting, thank you.
thank you for trying!
Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble it really does help I love your channel keep safe
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
It was worth it in the end 😅 glad you like the vids
Run into this issue lots in my drone footage in low light. Its a bit amateur but I mask off where I see most of the noticeable banding using gaussian blur/light screen blend mode and try to find the happy medium where it doesn't look masked and natural sky. ( this doesn't always work for me )
9:21 We don’t even need 10 bit monitors, just 10 bit footage and proper dithering upon playback. Vlc has this in the output module settings, I use the Bayer pattern. The pattern itself is in invisible to my eyes, unless I take a screenshot and zoom way in. This completely removes banding when used with 10 bit footage, and I don’t even have a 10 bit monitor. You can also use 10 bit footage with grain synthesis, like AV1 supports as standard. KZread should doing all of its AV1 encoding in 10 bit! Even with 8 bit sources
Great one Harv... The banding was driving me nuts. Computer is my setting form now one. the other ones are a bit too large of files. Cheers mate
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
Glad I could help!
Very informative, you're a great communicator Harv
appreciate your work
Thanks Harv! Yeah the banding in YT is unavoidable because their codec is the problem and there is no way [other than adding noise] to help get around the problem Adding noise to help with this problem has been a technique that has been around for a while, but as you pointed out... noise is noise [rock > - But it’s wonderful of you to put in this much effort and it’s appreciated! Your work here does drive home the adage; “the chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link” and this is unavoidable. The last remaining concept is to shoot content that is less prone to “banding” ... but I figure thats too much work and creatively limiting at the same time LOL
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
Such a thoughtful comment, between a rock and hard place was indeed how I felt making it 😅
@Speeder84XL
2 жыл бұрын
I think adding noise may make it worse in many cases - because even if it removes the banding, it also introduces a lot random changes between frames in the video, that makes the compression less efficient over all. That will cause the video to lose a lot of sharpness and detail instead (which is worse than the banding in my oppinion). I have uploaded noisy videos before (mostly taken with bad cameras in low light) and the compression makes the degradation (especially introduced blurriness and loss of detail) much worse compared to when uploading a "clean", low noise file. But, if a very slight static noise (that doesn't change between frames) could be mixed in as an overlay, that could probably work pretty good to break up banding without introducing new problems by random, rapid changes between frames.
@Studio51media
2 жыл бұрын
@@Speeder84XL How much noise? What is the nature of said noise? I go back to what I said, “a rock and a hard place”…. So many factors have to be dealt with to yield the best results… balance being the key, and understanding the trade offs, is the unavoidable reality.
@Speeder84XL
2 жыл бұрын
@@Studio51media Yes, there might be a sweet spot between avoid banding and the effects of noise. But, that requires many, many video renderings with different settings and reuploads to find that (which is pretty much undoable if you for example like me, have a slow computer, that takes long time to render videos). The setting may also be specific to particular videos depending on their brightness, color gradients, colors etc. So you might need to redo the work again many times. Too much noise and the video WILL get a blurry mess instead - while "to little" noise is causing nothing, but the banding. KZreads compression always look like crap more or less anyway, with blurry parts, loss of detail and large "blocks" that's often visible (which in my opinion is worse than the banding) - it's not worth to put that much effort into removing just one particular compression artifact. What everyone who get paid for their videos (who is partially responsible for the "problem") should do, is to bombard KZread with complains about their stupid algorithm that really promote as long (storage space consuming) videos as possible, by for example paying for view time and not views. It's beyond idiotic that they really waste storage space (along with the viewers time) like that, for no good reason - then they compress the shit out of the videos to "save space".
@Studio51media
2 жыл бұрын
@@Speeder84XL Hmmm interesting perspective, I totally understand and sympathize with the “slow computer” aspect, but I’m also kinda scratching my head on your perspective concerning YT’s overall quality… So the whole point is that YT’s codec is lossy and causes banding… and everyone agrees, what I’m a bit mystified about is your other comments about loss of quality like blockiness and degraded sharpness?? I upload a lot of 4K footage to YT… and yeah it’s never as stellar as the original but it’s also not THAT bad? At least not as bad I I think? I’m hearing from you. So I’m wondering… what do you upload? As an example I USED to upload big (less compressed) files and then let YT do the compression. Quickly I flipped that and now I try to use a compression that is as close to YT’s as I know how to do? Maybe that could help? Maybe that could get you better results? Trying to get Google to provide a better service… seems unlikely only because I think they do an incredible job (for what it costs us) and I think they would do better if they could, if only to (more fully) dominate the market? (Personally Google is scary enough, truth be known) so I’m happy enough, just looking for a way to optimize my output on YT… best of luck to you!
Wow lots of testing and I can imagine a possible headache or 2 in the process. I read somewhere that you have to upload files in higher resolution, so up sampling I think hd into 4K just so YT uses higher bitrate for that clip and causes less banding. I think I found a whole video on it one time but can’t remember where.
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
Oh god, I uploaded these in 4K! Maybe I should try rendering the files as 8K and see if that makes a difference 😂
@Panzardi
3 жыл бұрын
@@HarvVideoAudioStuff i think that might be the golden ticket! Try it 🙂
@NatLifeSounds
16 күн бұрын
are you joke?😄
You are the guy! Bravo!
Sweet, spot on advice, Thx!
Great Information provided, thank you for the great effort~ Like!
Very interesting. Thank you for conducting this. I did my own similar experiment. I uploaded countless videos and analyzed them meticulously. The best result I achieved was h.265, 4K and sharpening a little bit too much with an unsharp mask, to account for the denoising that occurs during uploading. I also found that film grain broke up some of the banding, as I m shoot mostly in low light, but like you, I found that the amount of grain required to break up banding, does produce an effect that just looks like unwanted noise. TL;DR: The best settings I found are h.265, upscaled to 4K, sharpened a little bit too much in the editor.
I'm only half way through the video but have you watched the video the MKBHD made where he reuploaded the same video to KZread like a hundred times or something? It shows you extremely well how the KZread compression works. Anything that's static is compressed and almost "freezed". I'm assuming that the reason noise reduction is making it look worse on KZread is because then the sky is so smooth that KZread is compressing it and creating the banding. So if you use grain, that keeps the sky "moving" if you get me? That means it'll compress it less. At least that's a theory :)
@Speeder84XL
2 жыл бұрын
The sky being smooth is indeed most of the problem (it doesn't have to do much with movement) - because even if it is smooth, the color/brightness will still in most cases vary slightly in different parts of it. That means, there will be slow color gradients - which is the worst when it comes to banding. I don't think adding noise is a good idea though - while it will break up slow color gradients with and prevent banding, noise also makes the compression less efficient and will cause the video to get blurry and fuzzy and lose a lot of detail (which is worse than the banding, in my oppinion).
Thank you, this is going to help me with a project I’m doing. I am going to crop/edge feather an interview subject against a black cloth and add slight noise or grain to the black background only so there’s no ugly banding next to the nice person/ subject on camera. The original shot is too wide and the cloth too small and you can see the wall behind, which is why I want to make everything around him a nice, even black
It's more about the colours i think, the best would be to use a AI softwere like topaz video enhance AI, which balances the colour to a optimal lvl depending upon the preset ure using. But still topaz also have it's different issue. Mann i really want a better way to solve these bendings😂
Very helpful!! Thank u
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
🙏🏻
Oddly enough, I like some noise reduction banding in the cinematic, low light music video look. I think it has a certain appeal to it. I might just be crazy, though lol
Have you tried super-sizing yet? (upscaling to 6K or 8K).
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
2 жыл бұрын
Yes I have! I’ve been testing Topaz and have been quite impressed. I’ve written some content for it but haven’t continued as it seems like it’s been fairly well covered on YT 👍🏻
Not sure I agree about Vimeo. We have a business account and frequently add 20GB+ files. I just tested a small (
Still banding for me, you need a pretty expensive display to get enough quality to get rid of banding
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
2 жыл бұрын
Bring on 10 bit being the norm 👍🏻
How can you read my mind so well?
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
😅
Tim Yemmax..prof colorist on KZread..uses free davinci resolve software which allows specific upload controls....has a nice video spelling
Hi, do these tips apply for 8 bit video?
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
2 жыл бұрын
Hi, yes indeed. Although it’s more about reducing the effect that KZread has on your footage once uploaded rather than general tips for avoiding banding 👍🏻
So what was the best codec?
I wonder if uploading in H.265 would make a difference?
Why am I hearing "Google Crime"?
Hi :) I want to ask you: How settings & which codec with parameters I should use for upload to youtube. Especially for TIMELAPSE and FLOWMOTION in my 1440p video source. I want to have nice quality in KZread Player - in mode 720p 480p 360p 240p and 160p too. I use DaVinci Resolve & I'm a novice in this theme.
Make one of how to export for Instagram ! Thanks
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
Good idea 👍🏻
Greta video sir. Safari on Big Sur does do 4K on KZread sir
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
They fixed it! Shame most video guys like me are scared to update as it tends to break EVERYTHING 😂
@RockyColaFizz
3 жыл бұрын
@@HarvVideoAudioStuff Lol. I get it. So far though. so good. Catalina was a nightmare forever. Big Sur has been much better for me so far. I have it on my 16inch 2019 MacBook Pro and my 2019 16 core MacPro. All good.
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
3 жыл бұрын
That’s good to hear, I think I’ll still wait a bit longer as I’m super paranoid 😅
@digitalfxuk
3 жыл бұрын
Came into the comments section to say this too 👍
Hate to break it to you but all the clips show a very similar level of banding and raster effect when I watch on KZread
if youtube banding is predictabe and they know what evel of banding videos get they should add a toggable grain filter since grain limits banding.
I'm in this same journey of uploading dozens of tests. However I compared my videos to other videos on youtube (with similar lighting), and they dont have as much blockinness and banding as mine, even when exporting with insane bitrates at 1440p, :( What could I do? :(
@roman.keller
Жыл бұрын
Upscale to 4k.
Have you tried 8K upload? Ahaha
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
2 жыл бұрын
🤢😂
5:37
All this did was prove that my TV has terrible banding that I never noticed before.
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
2 жыл бұрын
Excellent, well good that the effort is appreciated
Awesome tutorial! Really appreciate it! I make filmmaking related tutorials as well. Any support would mean alot! Thanks again
You won't be Apple Devices, Full Stop? After the release of the M1 Max MacBook Pro, you'll be pretty much the only one on the planet with this attitude, full stop.
@HarvVideoAudioStuff
2 жыл бұрын
The 10 bit render mode wasn’t available when I made this, it’s now my go to (see my pinned comment 👆🏻)
I just dont understand why i have a quality video and when uploaded to utube its crap ? Why so complicated ?