Video coding systems and methods protect against banding artifacts in decoded image content. According to the method, a video coder may identify, from content of pixel blocks of a frame of video data, which pixel blocks are likely to exhibit banding artifacts from the video coding/decoding processes. The video coder may assemble regions of the frame that are likely to exhibit banding artifacts based on the identified pixel blocks' locations with respect to each other. The video coder may apply anti-banding processing to pixel blocks within one or more of the identified regions and, thereafter, may code the processed frame by a compression operation.