Significant Banding Artifacts during Intro Video (New Big Picture)

[Creepio]

I would love to consider this a bug, but I can't because it just doesn't qualify.

https://i.imgur.com/r2nDwbY.png

In the above screenshot, you will notice pretty extreme color banding artifacts. If you don't know what banding artifacts, I implore you to skim this wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_banding

The reason this is happening is due to the extremely dim gradients in combination with video compression. Video compression inherently tries to squash detail of low light scenarios to improve the efficiency of bitrate distribution to other parts of the image that require more bits, and the human eye is naturally less capable of picking out detail of dark areas of video compared to light areas.

The problem here, is that 99% of this video is dark, with huge sweeping gradients that animate. Combine that with the fact that there might be a color conversion happening that further reduces the available shades from 0-255 to 16-235. That means, gradients get hurt even more by this.

The gradient banding artifacts worsen on my TCL HDR 10bit TV because of features like "smart HDR" being enabled, but even with it disabled, I can still see the banding artifacts and I can still see them on my other 2 monitors, which means it's not a display issue.

Solution?

• Try encoding a higher quality video that makes less use of animating gradients. Simply adding noise won't work because noise inflates filesize, and noise is usually lost during compression anyway. Trial and error some things.
  
  
• You could try encoding the video with HDR and 10bit, but that might be more stressful on people's systems, not to mention, not everyone is using a 10bit display with HDR enabled.
  
  
• You could try overlaying an animating noise pattern on TOP of the video, but again, this might not entirely solve the problem, and it might just be more stressful on people's systems if you do that.

I hope you consider revising the intro video! Thanks! 🙂

[XVII]

The banding is so gross. A stain on big picture every time I turn it on.

Surprised it's not just rendered.

[Deathturtle]

Still there, still just as bad... let's face it - this isn't getting fixed any time soon 😔

[TheBigThief]

It is a pity. Such poor image quality ruins the experience. Details matter....

[Seven7]

look at the share of users with 10bit LUT monitors among all users. and now among Steam users. and there 12 bit along with 8bit majority
no one will create problems for the majority because of a tiny percentage

and the problem of gradients in the steam client is already 14 years old, since the release of the 2010 version - they are equally terrible on ANY monitor, old or new CRT TFT OLED etc. - because it is ugly css that constantly lags, does not load completely, and is distributed randomly. VGUI have skin support where you can remove ugly gradients, but they kill it. so, Steam

[Pickle toast]

2025 and the problem persists...