Oh! Sorry. Then it means Austin modified the filter and I still have the older version.
As always, thanks for testing!
Yes, kinda. The goal is to have a unique preset for each unique purpose. The fact that the settings are the same for a few presets is currently coincidental.
Minimal and Full-to-Limited are currently the same settings. However, if Shotcut ever supports BT.2020/HDR in the future, then it is very likely that Full-to-Limited will get split into Full-to-Limited SDR and Full-to-Limited HDR due to BT.2020 having a higher peak luminance. At that point, nobody will remember a rule that says “use Minimal for Full-to-Limited conversion unless it’s HDR then do something else”. It’s easier for the user to find a preset that matches exactly what they want to do, and ignore the rest.
Likewise, at some point in the future, the default preset will probe the clip it’s on to determine if it’s SDR or HDR, and set the default accordingly. It would no longer be guaranteed that Default and Minimal are the same thing in that case.
Also, Minimal and Full-to-Limited are the same for SDR today. But as people continue to play with the filter, some better settings for Full-to-Limited may be found in the future. I’d like to be able to update the Full-to-Limited preset without breaking the Minimal preset and confusing everybody that was trained to believe they’re the same thing.
Basically, just because they’re the same settings today doesn’t mean they will stay the same in the future. So I would rather not have presets that pull double or triple duty, then redefine them in the future and confuse existing users.
With the background above, how do you feel about the risk of confusion today versus the risk of confusion in the future?
Good eye for noticing the duplication, in any case.
Yes, good point. In version 1, “Average” used to be called “FFmpeg default values” and was the original default. Later on, I changed the default preset. But the values used by the Undo buttons are hard-coded and I forgot to update them. I will put in a pull request to fix this.
A lot of labels changed during the review process. I decided not to update the documentation until the dust settled.
Anything stronger than Average gets into the territory of solving very specific problems for very specific footage. The only one-size-fits-all presets I could find above Average strength were Blue Sky and Red Sky. For everything else, customization will be needed. Strong generalized settings would have much higher odds of making a mess rather than cleaning one up.
You bet. 
You’re more knowledgeable in this than I am but based on what you wrote why not hold back on including the Full Range To Limited Range preset until the day Shotcut actually supports HDR? Cause it sounds like it’s just a place holder for now and that’s not going to serve users except maybe confuse them.
Full range to limited range conversion is one of the most common causes of banding, and is therefore expected to be the primary use case for Deband, even in SDR. That’s why it’s also the default setting. All that a future HDR preset would do is tweak the settings to do the same job in the bigger luminance space provided by BT.2020. Banding due to range conversion is a problem in both SDR and HDR, meaning Deband has to gracefully handle both.
If anything, it’s the Minimal and Average presets that are so generic it’s not even certain where they would be used. But they give a user an idea of what “reasonable” settings look like if they’re experimenting.
Awesome! This saved some 8-bit footage. I shot some interviews with a gray backdrop and the sun dipping in and out created very noticeable banding, especially because I tweaked the grade a bit (which 8 bit is not ideal for). I used an overall threshold of 3.5, increased the pixel range to 7 and ticked off the Randomize pixel range box. This last step was important to retain details in the faces. With it ticked on, the faces got a strong ‘beauty filter’. ; )
This is a life saver! Thanks very much!
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Interesting results! I was recently thinking about adding a Skin Tones preset to the filter. I’ll check out the no-Randomize results.
See