What is dithering?
Also called: colour banding fix
Definition
Dithering adds a very fine pattern of noise to an image so smooth gradients do not break into visible bands of colour.
Ordinary video stores 256 levels of each colour. A slow gradient across a large frame needs more steps than that, and the edges between steps show as bands. Dithering scatters the steps so the eye sees a smooth blend.
The noise is far too fine to see as grain at normal viewing size. It matters most for the soft gradient backgrounds used behind screen recordings, which are exactly the kind of picture that video compression turns into stripes.
Related terms
- Gradient background
- A gradient background is a smooth blend of colours placed behind a screen recording.
- Bitrate
- Bitrate is the amount of data a video uses per second, usually measured in megabits per second (Mbps).
- H.264
- H.264 is the most widely supported video codec: nearly every browser, phone, computer and video site can play it.