From the gloom of Dragonstone's strategy chambers to the night-time assault on King's Landing, Season 2 relies heavily on low-light cinematography. Poorly compressed videos suffer from "color banding" (blocky gradients in the dark) and "macroblocking" in shadows. An "Extra Quality" x265 encode utilizes 10-bit color depth (even for standard 1080p SDR content), which expands the available color palette and completely eliminates banding in dark scenes. Capturing Complex Textures
