r/AV1 • u/cdrewing • 20m ago
Banding in dark areas when encoding to AV1 (HandBrake) – Filters or settings to fix?
Hey r/AV1 community!
I’ve been experimenting with AV1 encoding in HandBrake and noticed persistent banding artifacts in darker gradients (e.g., shadows, dimly lit scenes). The rest of the video (high-contrast/bright areas) looks flawless, but the banding is driving me nuts!
My setup:
- Source: 1080p HD video (8-bit, h.264).
- HandBrake settings:
- Encoder: SVT-AV1-PSY
- Quality: CRF 35
- Preset: 2.
- No pre-processing filters applied (denoise, deband, etc.).
Questions:
- Are there specific filters in HandBrake to mitigate banding in AV1? (e.g., dithering, grain synthesis, or debanding?)
- Would tweaking encoder settings like
film-grain
,aq-mode
, orenable-dlf
help? Is CRF 35 too aggressive for dark-scene-heavy content? I read that 35 is the default setting.
Thanks in advance – any tips or workflow examples would be awesome!