[MEncoder-users] x264 Color Banding

[James Hastings-Trew]

What x264 encoding setting can I use to reduce or eliminate some subtle 
color banding I am seeing in my output? Here are my current settings:

-x264encopts 
qp=17:bframes=4:partitions=all:me=umh:nocabac:nofast_pskip:nodct_decimate:frameref=6:subq=6:mixed_refs:level_idc=31:threads=auto

I'm resizing video from 1920:1088 down to 1280:720

Speed of encoding is really of no concern - I am more concerned with 
preserving detail and smoothness of gradients. If this were Photoshop 
and I was having trouble with banding in gradients on resizing a 
picture, I'd add a low level amount of noise to the image before scaling 
it down. I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea in video. ;)