Copy link to clipboard
Copied
I am new to After Effects but have a general understanding of how to compose and export videos. I donot have a good understanding of proper settings for desired results in exporting. I have a simple project: A gradient background with shapes in the foreground that fade in and out. My comp is 1920x1080, I am set to 60fps and exporting to H.264 through Media Encoder. After I play the exported file, I see a bunch of banding and choppy fading happening with my shapes. File attached for reference. Please someone help me understand how to make these transitions softer and high quality. Thanks.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Very subtle gradients compressed and rendered to 8-bit video will show banding. That's is a limitation of the format. The only real fix is to add some noise or give your gradient more room by expanding the color range significantly. I did not see any other problems and I did not see any animation.
Copy link to clipboard
Copied
Rick already said it - this is a limitation of the format, not an AE setting, and you're shooting yourself in the foot by not actually having anything animated in there. Having variance in the hex tiles by them e.g. subtly fading on and off already would improve matters considerably. Otherwise only further changes to the design will take things to another level. You might want to read up what banding actually is and how MPEG-based compression further exacerbates the issue due to the inbuilt chroma undersampling.
Mylenium