Banding on Quicktime Prores 422 10 bit videos in Premiere not elsewhere

[jamesdrakefilms]

I have a strange issue where when bringing in 10 bit prores 422 footage into PPro 22.4.0 on a M1 Max MacBook Pro, the files show significant ugly banding with a lut applied. Footage is from a Blackmagic cinema camera 6k pro and 6k (two camera setup) shot in their "film" log mode. When playing the files back in Quicktime or in Davinci Resolve 18, no banding issues. Strangely, if I export an h264 version from quicktime and bring that re-encoded h264 into premiere... no banding. 

When exporting, the banding still exists, despite checking "maximum render quality/bit depth" and trying a host of different export codecs. It seems to me the banding is happening either on import, maybe premiere is using the wrong version of quicktime or similar? I haven't seen the banding with other codecs. In fact, on the same project I shot some blackmagic raw files in the same setup same lighitng, and no banding in premiere (of course 12 bit, but the prores should be fine).

Take a look at the the two attachments. Both are exported frames from Ppro, both with the same lut, the prores file is straight from camera, the h264 version is exported in Quicktime and brought back in and lut applied. 

Any thoughts on how to get around this banding problem?

Thanks!

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Hi jamesdrakefilms,

We're sorry about the poor experience. Does it export properly from Premiere Pro if ProRes hardware accelerated encoding is disabled under Preferences > Media? Would you mind sharing a download link for the sample media with which you are experiencing this issue? It will help to diagnose the issue properly at our end.

Thanks,

Sumeet

[eleazarw33251381]

I had this same problem, and it was fixed by turning of ProRes hardware accelerated encoding. I don't know why itcauses banding, but that fixed it.

[jamesdrakefilms]

Ah very interesting, how do you turn off the prores hardware encoding? Does it show banding in your program window before exporting? I have it during preview and during export 

[R Neil Haugen]

What eleazer is referencing are the twin option in the user Preferences ... for hardware encoding and decoding ... for H.264/5 media. Not any "ProRes" encoding option, as there isn't one.

Those options shouldn't be affecting anything other than long-GOP H.264/5 media, but apparently, on some systems, there are problems.

Neil

[eleazarw33251381]

Yes, I had banding in my program monitor as well. The setting can be found in Premiere Pro > Preferences > Media, it is a checkbox about Hardware Acceleration, and requires a computer restart. The setting should theoretically have no effect on ProRes footage but for some reason it does. I found this solution by reading the comment on this post, made by @Sumeet Kumar Choubey 

[R Neil Haugen]

Jarle Leirpoll did some amazing in-depth sleuthing on this issue.

Jarle’s Page on Max Depth/RQ

Read that, it's not long and very useful. Essentially, on the Sequence settings, also set Max Bit Depth (even though that just says it's for previews) and on export, maker sure the 16bpc option is used.

And let's hope there's not an M1 coding issue within Premiere on top of this stuff.

Neil