I can promise there are no jump-scares in here. And yes, I finally got an animator to do in a couple of days what would have taken me a couple of weeks...!

It looks even worse once you realise how dirty your screen is

“256 Shades of Green” is the boring spinoff of a franchise we never asked for

0:42 no way this dude just sneakily taught us how greenscreening works entirely in the edit

I actually noticed that if I add noise to my RAW photographs I can reduce color banding, but never knew why

He's really mastered how to present a topic , his 6 min video feels like a 2 min video

I bet people in the future will intentionally add banding as "2010's aesthetic"

This always made me angry when it comes to windows wallpapers. The image preview looks fine, but when you set it as a wallpaper, windows compresses the image very heavily (even on PCs that have loads of RAM and graphic memory), and makes evey dark wallpaper look extremely bad. Not to mention Windows 10 and 11 does even worse job, and you can see compression on their stock wallpapers. All because Microsoft wants that stupid mobile market.

Having worked with digital video as a hobby since the Video Toaster's introduction, I've understood this phenomenon for ages. Your explanation - with animations - taught me a few things I hadn't given much thought to. It also explains banding better than I could ever hope to. Brilliant video as always. Keep up the great work!

"why its blocky in the dark" me watching in 144p so my PC can run: huh

I'm a graphic designer. Crying over color banding is my job.

I’ve finally found a video that explains what I’ve spent hours and hours explaining albeit rather poorly to friends of mine regarding banding. Thank you so much for putting this up on KZfaq

The reason I love good 4k restorations is because I hardly see these. Even back in the 2000s I noticed those brands in my blu rays on 1080p TVs. If you haven’t seen The Godfather, for instance, in 4K I highly recommend it. It’s never been more dark, shadowy and crisp since the theater.

"why doesn't the bright background have colourbanding?" me, sobbing: IT DOES, RIGHT THERE, I CAN SEE IT

Me a colourblind person: watches video of a guy in a brown shirt talking about colours that don't exist

As a digital illustrator who has to combat color banding on digital art programs, thank you! I never knew this was a thing until you mentioned it, and it immediately clicked as the reason why my gradients always look a little...unblended.

The freaking level of detail in production, adding a bit of reverb when showing the movie theater.... Awesome!

I love that on his laptop, the Google search is "is my monitor a waste of money"

Good lord this is so well done

God this must have taken ages to edit 😅

5:50 The blue hand flicking him off! XD

I think we can assume that this wasn't done in one take, as Tom didn't celebrate at the end.

After 3 years of searching and scouring forums for the reason my 4K television does this while I’m watching Netflix and Hulu, I finally get my answer from a recommendation on KZfaq. I feel like I completed a long journey accidentally.

Jesus christ the editing on this video is stellar.

you put chills down my spine in some parts

Gotta love that fun looking editing

"and no one will ever notice the background" People who edited and gave effort for background to look good: Dude wtf

Thanks for this easy-to-digest explanation of this phenomena. I deal with this kind of noise constantly in videos, and the inclusion of scanlines in those areas on top of the lower-bitrate they typically receive on top of the re-encoding by youtube to an already-compressed video, can make for some really weird visual anomalies that hopefully our codecs and hardware can get better at dealing with in the future.

Thank you Tom!!! this question was driving me nuts. I have an absolutely incredible and very expensive screen on my laptop and it kills me that all the dark and gloomy shows look rubbish no matter that I do😭 at least now I know it is not due to my hardware. I just need to switch back to physical media.. oh damn.. they all went bankrupt didn't they🥺

This mans editor should get a round of applause

3:06 "Why doesn't that have colour banding all over it..." My monitor: *sweats profusely in excessive circular colour banding*

Ive been seeing this for so long to the point when you said "its invisible" at the blue part, I thought "it looks like a ripple to me"

The editing on this video was top tier! Everything was motivated and actually contributed to me understanding 🙌

"Because if it's very dark the consumer won't care..." Me and everyone I know watching a tv show or movie during a dark scene : "I'd be more engaged if I could SEE what was happening"

Tom , this is your best video so far. This effect is described incredibly neat and easy. Thanks for your videos!

Animations in this video deserve at least an oscar.

I feel like Tom just got a degree in every possible thing and knows everything about everything. Less like Einstein and more like the guy down the road who you can ask any question and get an answer. Tom is google, but in more detail.

so when you see the background getting more detailed, that means something's coming

4:44 "Filmed on a potato" made me laugh xD

This is probably the highest quality editing on a KZfaq video that I have ever seen. Well fuckin done.

Tom: "What do you fear is hiding in the dark?" Viewers: *distant screams in h.264*

That Editing...Wow! How lucky we are to have such talented people posting this kind of videos on KZfaq. Thank you Tom

Editing done on this video is so great. It make the video much more easier to understand.

I still can see the banding in strong light.

The quality of this video should be use as example of the term "quality" itself. You made a masterpiece!

Tom is just like a guy in a cartoon with a closet full of red shirts

This video helped me tremendously. I was struggling with compression artifacts when I had a few seconds of text over a solid dark grey background. Then I remembered this video and decided to switch the background to a light blue gradient. Far less artifacts. Cheers Tom!

Incredibly well done video. Explains the basics of Video compression in plain language. 👏👏

And then there are the potato recordings used for 99% of ghost captures, which are then compressed to 140p, and ripped off each time crushing the quality until you are left with grey mushy soup.

So my eyesight isn't blurry. Everyone is just doing a massive amount of dithering.

This is one of Tom's all-time best videos. Explaining a complicated topic with simple and conversational (but accurate!) language and *chef's kiss* perfect illustrations.

I always wondered what was going on here. Very easy to follow explanation, love it!

Some friends and me watched a pirate version of Paranormal Activity prior Paramount Pictures relaunched it. Most of them were really scared of the bedroom scenes not because of the tension, but because the black of the open door was full of moving compression artifacts. The codec ghost.

Tom: "Why Dark video is a blocky mess." Monster Movie directors: _"Im gonna pretend I didn't see that."_

2:16 "is my monitor a waste of money" - nice touch

Shoutout to the editor/animator, this is just amazing

"is my monitor a waste of money", nice one

The worst for the compression : rain during the night. Multiple small moving objects, dark background and the sound is very hard to compress while conserving a realistic rain noise.

This video is just so great. Your editing and script are just so on point.

I used to work for Sharp Labs - this issue was a problem when DVDs came out - they didn’t have enough colors compared to the LCDs we were making. The researchers were able to add image processing to the display pipeline to smooth the gradients. The Abyss movie was one of the reference movies because it had such bad banding in the dark. The algorithm had to identify the foreground and background and smooth out the background. Once Blueray’s came out the dynamic range of the source and the display became rematched. But then, we moved to streaming 4K and also TVs had to become cheaper. It can still be done probably.

In any point of my life, i have never thought i could see Tom Scott deep fried, yet here i am.

"Did I waste money on a 144hz monitor?" I feel attacked, Tom. At least my scrolling is smooth as heck.

Since our vision works on a logarithmic basis, I'm wondering why the visual signal is not encoded in this basis too. It would solve the problem, I think!

I like how Tom's shirt colour is already kinda accurate with 64 colours

This is one of those videos I come back to every now and then because it’s so good

toms hand gestures are just so satisfying? it’s like “on beat” to what he’s saying. i feel like people don’t usually do with their gestures

thank you, i checked my monitors contrast setting after watching this, because i already saw the colour grading on the bright background before you enhanced it :D

the sfx are insanely well made. that lurking sound effect scared the living hell out of me

You know the Corona situation is bad when Tom Scott has been forced to use a greenscreen.

The nice thing about HD physical media like Blu-ray, is that it plays the video at a very high bitrate allowing for those dark scenes to actually look like it was intended.

Thank you perfectly explained! I always wondered why my videos looked relativ good on my hdr monitor but when uploading on youtube the darker scenes are always are terrible blocky mess, now I know why.

you know my life was perfect before this vid, now i can never unsee it and ive came back 2 years later and i still cant unsee it

*When a compressed video shows examples of compression*

Does the fact that I can still see the color banding on the blue gradient say good things about my eyes or bad things about my monitor

what makes it worse is that you can always see your ugly reflection half the time

I liked the video. I have to re-watch when my attention span isn't shite from how March and this week have been. Gave a thumbs up. I'll be back.

"It's because there aren't enough colors." Jay Foreman: *CONFUSED SCREAMING*

Omg I remember learning about this in school! It took the teacher over 8 lessons just to explained what this guy explained in 6 minutes!

I just found this video and I'm so glad I did. I notice these things all the time, I even saw it on the bright blue screen and it always bothered me. I'm so glad that I now know why, I don't have to wonder anymore!

This was a tour de force of video editing. I love the continuous narrative and the real team illustration of what he's talking about.

I was just thinking, "This must've taken a long time to edit." Until I saw the top comment.

Game of Thrones S8 E3: This can’t stop me because I can’t read!

This is the best video explaining a difficult problem to explain, I have ever seen. Thanks!

I've wondered about this for years but never knew how to frame the question. Thanks!

I watched the Lego City movie, and I wondered why everything was so blocky...

I have literally always noticed this even as a kid. I could never enjoy a movie as much as i could at home as apposed to a theater. Thats why i watch official releases at theaters and not at home with hbo max. I like the real deal.

The editing in this video is so fun to watch

It's things like this that plague digital video. It's also partly the reason film hasn't died out. That and the fact that with film you don't have to upgrade the projector or a digital display, just change the film size

The main thing I take away from this is that Tom watches Polygon

Is this going to be one of those videos where Tom flexes his editing skills for 6 minutes straight while I'm crying working out transitions on windows movie maker?

When the background changed between all colour its so cool, i love rainbow / rgb. (Rgb as in keyboard/mouse rgb lighting)

Bro I just got a data time ad that at the beginning said “looks like you’re about to watch a Tom Scott video

0:24 I wasn't expecting to see Pat Gill in a Tom Scott video, but it sure was a pleasant surprise

Tom: "1 Gb/s speed" Me: **cries in 1Kb/s speed**

At around 3:30 when you showed the little bit with the brightness increased, that image really delighted me, it was so perfect and clean in its bounding.

the editing is amazing in this

3:22 "Normally, it's invisible." Me who can see it without zooming in: *Do I need a new monitor?*

1. Computer colour encoding usually follows a more or less exponential gamma curve, modelled after the brightness you'd get for a specific relative voltage on a CRT screen. This messes with a lot of things but is one of the reasons dark content looks worse. 2. Video colour encoding throws away the values between 0-16 and 235-255 to account for under- and overshoot in digital representations of analogue video. The remaining values are then stretched to the full 0-255 range by your video player, creating additional banding beyond the banding already created by not using the full range, and by only using 8 bits. 3. Both of these problems can be easily masked to the point of being invisible to the naked eye through debanding and dithering in the video player, something most modern devices are powerful enough to do in real time. However, up to this point they've mostly been niche features in videophile-oriented software like madVR, and unavailable in web browsers.

Okey, this one's interesting. One of those passing questions you get at random times but forget the next second. Thanks for the answers and the amazing editing skills.

i was always frustrated due to the banding while making gradients in art-