Has Anyone Used PHYX Cleaner to fix 8 bit Color Banding?

[Micah Mahaffey]

I have been looking all over the internet on how to get rid of 8 bit color banding and came across 2 programs. One is "Deband - Sapphire VFX" but costs like $1,200 and then there's "PHYX Cleaner" with right now is only $49. My only question is if anyone has used it before and if its actually legit? Does its De banding plug-in feature actually work?  Thanks! 

[hmcindie]

I don't know but you can remove banding pretty well with neatvideo. It's a noise reduction plugin and it's really slow but I use it with after effects and combined with 16/32bit processing, it really does give a lot of boost to 8bit material.

[Sekhar]

I didn't know you could remove banding. The PHYX Cleaner is claiming to do a lot (and for $49), sounds too good to be true to me. Even the Sapphire seems OK at best for that price (see demo at https://youtu.be/yHZfPmgR_XY on YouTube). If you do find something reasonably priced that does remove at least some banding, do let us know!

Hmcindie, how would you use Neat Video to remove banding? I have Neat Video, and it does an awesome job removing noise, but I thought noise actually helps hide banding? In fact, adding grain might help mask it.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Yup I remove banding using neat video! The trick is to build the noise profile on a banded area, it sees the bands transition as noise, and smoothens it out. Adding a layer of grain after neat makes it even better. Remember to set your NLE to work in 16bit or 32bit space (higher than 8bit, if you do so banding will not be removed by neat or grain for some reason)

Here's an example of 8bit in one of my shoots vs. after I added neat video and simple grain:

[Sekhar]

Yup I remove banding using neat video! The trick is to build the noise profile on a banded area, it sees the bands transition as noise, and smoothens it out. Adding a layer of grain after neat makes it even better. Remember to set your NLE to work in 16bit or 32bit space (higher than 8bit, if you do so banding will not be removed by neat or grain for some reason)

Here's an example of 8bit in one of my shoots vs. after I added neat video and simple grain:

​This looks great, I'll check it out. I wonder how it affects the rest of the image though. Your example is a silhouette, so can't quite tell.

[dahlfors]

Here's an example of 8bit in one of my shoots vs. after I added neat video and simple grain:

Looks great!

Would be neat to see how that method looks in motion. You wouldn't happen to have that clip online somewhere?

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Looks great!

Would be neat to see how that method looks in motion. You wouldn't happen to have that clip online somewhere?

Great point, as you know, neat video as a noise reduction tool, when used on significantly moving noise, it masks that nose but behind the mask there's a wave-like motion appearance. Now, when it's used on bands, it shows the exact same behavior, if the banding is too thick and is moving quickly on frame-to-frame bases (like a handheld shot of a sky with shaky hands) then masked wavy-ness bands can appear in motion behind the ''mask''. It does work very well on most normal scenes though for both noise and banding but when the noise/bands are too significant it shows that wavynsess, which still looks better than distinct bands in my opinion. I'll try to post a couple of seconds to show what I mean with defect as it's hard to convey in words!

​This looks great, I'll check it out. I wonder how it affects the rest of the image though. Your example is a silhouette, so can't quite tell.

​​Don't worry it just affects the sky/banding area. But it does depend on the scene, maybe your detail area looks like the banded sky, it's highly shot-based so key is trying and tweaking each different scene (not frame)

[Sekhar]

I just tried on a clip with lot of banding (downloaded from https://vimeo.com/57128145 - it's not my video, but it does have a lot of banding we can test with) and unfortunately Neat Video didn't seem to help. If you're able to fix it, would you mind giving us a quick tut on how to do it? It'd be a great help!

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

As I said neat video is highly shot-dependent, and is somewhat incosistent in getting good results with banding and even noise, which is a downside of the otherwise magical product, so I urge everyone to try the previously mentioned plugins/software, maybe they are much better and it would help the community, and if they're worse it would help just as much too.

Yes I'll download vimeo clip and give it a try, but unfortunately it's 8 AM here, on my way to the clinic, will finish the long day job and go back home (where the dark room lies) at around 6 PM, then I'll be able to try, So a bit (well quite a bit) too late sorry, but I will do and if I succeed ill share how. Sorry again for the late reply. 

As a side note trying to derail the topic: I keep imagining if I could have my tablet do this kind of work, wouldn't be awesome if we could run Premiere/Vegas on a tablet away from the dark room? And edit, grade and upload on the road, imagine how time saving that would be especially for those of us cursed with a second time-consuming jobs apart from filmmaking. Is that even a possibility? I mean for example how about a tablet that can run a full windows 7 OS? Like a Microsoft Surface or any other windows 7 tablet, wouldn't it be theoritically possible to just install vegas/premiere on there and work using the touch screen UI? Don't want blazing fast speed here, just something that works, cuts and grades and renders even slowly. Anyone tried anything of that kind? 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

I don't see an original file download version, just a 2mbs 720p mp4. Could you send me the original 1080p mov?

[Sekhar]

It's not my video, just something I found Googling for banding. I tried with the video available through the download button.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

No I do understand that. I mean the poster says the original MOV 1080p version is available for download, but all I can find is a 720p mp4 2mbs file, so I thought it might appear to you but not to me for some reason and you'd download the original MOV, upload it to Google drive and send it to me, if the mov is visible to you.

[hmcindie]

Hmcindie, how would you use Neat Video to remove banding? I have Neat Video, and it does an awesome job removing noise, but I thought noise actually helps hide banding? In fact, adding grain might help mask it.

​Just do a light noise reduction pass. Neat Video automatically fills up 8-bits to 16/32bits while cleaning up stuff. Noise helps reduce banding in the final 8-bit version (especially if compressing it to h264) but I can get really smooth video out of neatvideo. For example, do a huge curve that lifts the shadows really up so you can see banding. Now add a neatvideo noise reduction before that curve and suddenly all the bandings are gone. You need to do it in a 16-bit composition atleast in AE.

Using Neatvideo in 8-bit mode or even in Premiere won't help.

You don't even have to sample a banded area in my experience.

[Sekhar]

​Just do a light noise reduction pass. Neat Video automatically fills up 8-bits to 16/32bits while cleaning up stuff. Noise helps reduce banding in the final 8-bit version (especially if compressing it to h264) but I can get really smooth video out of neatvideo. For example, do a huge curve that lifts the shadows really up so you can see banding. Now add a neatvideo noise reduction before that curve and suddenly all the bandings are gone. You need to do it in a 16-bit composition atleast in AE.

Using Neatvideo in 8-bit mode or even in Premiere won't help.

You don't even have to sample a banded area in my experience.

​Thanks, but looks like you're talking about how Neat increases bit depth so you can grade with more latitude without introducing banding. I'm asking about video that already has banding, like the example I gave in the link earlier - can you take a clip with banding and reduce/eliminate the banding using Neat? I don't believe it's possible because banding is not noise that Neat can eliminate. In fact, it won't even allow you to build a profile by sampling the area because it's not uniform. But if you're able to reduce banding with Neat, please do tell us how because banding is something we all have to live with, certainly when using 8 bit videos.

[Mikey R]

It seems Neat Video will help with visible banding..

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/5745/banding-avoiding-it-and-fixing-it-current-consensus/p1

though sometimes can cause it!

http://www.neatvideo.com/examples-banding.html

A good guide, link.. right here

http://www.eoshd.com/2014/06/cure-banding-dslr-footage-gh4-4k-holds-key/

Anyone got a good workflow for batching footage through AE, if possible?