[pjc50]

"Fully render" is a strange way of putting it - most consumer hardware has only 8-bit colour depth, and lots of video compression algorithms will turn smooth gradients into blocky messes that would benefit from dithering.

If you're processing the decode at 10 or 16 bits and need to render at 8 bits, it's much better to dither than truncate.

[the8472]

> and lots of video compression algorithms will turn smooth gradients into blocky messes that would benefit from dithering.

More accurately: Either you have a 10bit-per-channel video (or better) which has smooth gradients which will need dithering when rendering to an 8bit-per-channel display.

Or you have 8bit video (more common) which will have to be passed through a debanding filter first. But then how do you get the debanded result onto the screen without reintroducing the banding? By dithering it.

[c3534l]

Fair enough. I don't think I've ever actually programmed a GPU with the purpose of making images, so my terminology might not be the most precise.