Good method for just dithering a source?

[Akai-Shuichi]

I just want to dither a source, I don't want to deband or denoise it, what would be a good method of doing this?

[TurboPascal7]

DitherPost or Dither_quantize from the good old dither package (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1386559#post1386559).

[feisty2]

addgrainc

[Akai-Shuichi]

I have not used either DistherPost or Dither_quantize before so what settings would you recommend?

Here is a screenshot of my source: http://i.imgur.com/vyTUhbq.jpg
Here is a screenshot when encoded through x264 10bit: http://i.imgur.com/4q0Zf10.jpg

In the black areas on the left of the image, in my source you can see that it looks quite fine, but in my x264 version it is very splochy...

Any recommendations?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I just want to dither a source, I don't want to deband or denoise it, what would be a good method of doing this?

You can not "just dither" a source.

Dithering can be applied when converting from a higher precision (bit-depth) to a lower one. Typical example is going from "true color" (24-Bit) to 256 colors (8-Bit). In that case you will have some quantization error and that can be "dithered" to avoid the ugly banding. Also, those "deband" filters (like Gradfun2db) work by first upconverting the source to higher bitdepth, then smoothing the gradients in some way and finally dithering down to the original bitdepth.

If you don't do anything of that sort, you cannot dither. But as feisty2 suggested, you can simply add some noise by using a simple noise filter. If that is what you want...

[Reel.Deel]

Give GrainFactory3 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1191292#post1191292) a try. It lets you choose where to add grain.
Based on your screenshot it seems your resizing. If you choose you may go the 16-bit route.
Resize with Dither_resize16 then use GrainFactoryLite (http://www.nmm-hd.org/newbbs/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=668) (similar to GrainFactory3 but in 16-bit) then Dither_quantize to get the desired bit depth (10-bit).

[feisty2]

your source is covered with grain so it looks fine, my suggestion is denoise it then deband it in 16bit and finally encode in 10bit, if you don't want to do any of this, just use a higher bitrate to keep the grain

[Seedmanc]

A wild guess would be to use Blockbuster plugin, it's aimed directly at noising the dark and flat areas that usually get lower bitrate than needed to avoid problems.
Though I'm surprised 10bit x264 still has them.

[Akai-Shuichi]

A wild guess would be to use Blockbuster plugin, it's aimed directly at noising the dark and flat areas that usually get lower bitrate than needed to avoid problems.
Though I'm surprised 10bit x264 still has them.

WOW! I never knew that such a filter existed! Thank you! This combats the problem exactly.