Anime - stripes in dark scenes

[Thar]

Hi there,

I encountered the problem while encoding Shakugan no Shana. Nothing really visible while moving, but I thought I would post it here.

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6306/samplejg4.png

Those stripes, which you can see on that girl face, are in dark scenes with one big source of light, and they appear in the middle of a pass between them. Does anyone knows function/filter/plugin to remove them?

[hellsings]

For me i don't see anything please highlight your problem :)

[Thar]

Well, I should consider it good that you can't see it on first sight ;)

If you look on that pic, you will notice that there is a dark room and a bright point in the middle, that is - the eye. A face is getting more brither the more it's closer to the eye. Now, look carefully, and you'll probably notice that brighter steps of the face color are stripped, moreover, they are divided by a thin lines of darker color. It should look smoother :]

[martino]

I'm not sure whether this could be called banding, but try something like gradfun2db. Another thing which comes into my mind would be to turn down your sharpening a bit, that is if you used any...

[hellsings]

Yeah, you can try gradfun2db but i'm no sure if it work :)
Maybe levels can reduce the impact of this effect :)

[DarkT]

Similiar thigns happen to me when I over-filter + sharpen, my solution is usually to disable all filters on that frame and start re-enabling them 1 by 1 to see which is the last straw which breaks the camel's back.

If you DO intend to use gradfun2db - do remember not to "encode" with it but use it as a "re-play" plugin... In ffdshow it's called "deband" or something...