reduce colour depth to 8 bit

[Sydlyne]

I know most people want to improve video quality, but I have a need to reduce the colour depth lower than 16 bit, hopefully to 8 bit. Does anyone know of software that will do this???

[mats.hogberg]

What kind of video do you start with, and what kind do you want to end up with?

/Mats

[Sydlyne]

I use AVI generally but MPEG would do, I need to flatten the video so I get a more "cartoon" look.

[guns1inger]

You could try simply posterising the video, or you could look at virtualdubmpeg2 and the MSU Cartooniser plugin, found here

http://www.compression.ru/video/cartoonizer/index_en.html

[Sydlyne]

I use the Cartooniser, it's great! I want to reduce the colour depth so Cartooniser has less information to work with.

[guns1inger]

Most (all ?) codecs won't save video at lower than 16 bit colour depth, and many wont go lower than 24 bit. Virtualdubmpeg2 will go as low as 16 bit.

There is a Posterize filter for vdub by Emiliano Ferrari. You could apply it with the level set around 7 - 9, then apply the cartooniser after that if you still need to.