Film Grain Software/Package

[Ryan Hamblin]

A few months back there was a package some one was advertising of film grain that had been scanned and you could get it at SD all the way up to 4K resolution. They offered many different stocks etc... and it came on a harddrive.

Does anyone know the name of this package or link to where to purchase it?

 

[Tom.Wong]

cinegrain?

 

[Dave Blackham]

I can quite understand why this is needed but I know many people who have tried most of their live to get rid of film gain ! Fashion seems to be repeating it self

 

[Tom.Wong]

I can quite understand why this is needed but I know many people who have tried most of their live to get rid of film gain ! Fashion seems to be repeating it self

personally i love film grain. i think it's one of the best aesthetics in cinema. Black Swan had so much grain in it, and it helped the piece even more. It's digital noise that i hate though... with a passion.

 

[Ryan Hamblin]

yup cinegrain... thanks guys

 

[Joe D'Arcy]

A few months back there was a package some one was advertising of film grain that had been scanned and you could get it at SD all the way up to 4K resolution. They offered many different stocks etc... and it came on a harddrive.

Does anyone know the name of this package or link to where to purchase it?

Hi Ryan, as suggested it was for cinegrain.

http://cinegrain.com/media

I don't know what the pricing structure is now, but I recall that the 35mm package was a bit pricey for indies.
Joe

 

[Kalani Prince]

Film grain and noise are two different realities altogether.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

When I contacted them about their cinegrain product, in particular about HD versions (1080P, 23.98), here is their response.

"Because commercial productions constitute the bulk of our business, we license our content to that market mostly.

We're glad to hear from you because we're currently working on a version of the CineGrain Film Library that you're looking for. "

Sounds like you need to license the material based on use, at least right now.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Many 3D packages have good grain simulators - some very good. You just put your footage as a backgroudn image and voila. Lightwave I believe has one, as does e-on Vue. I'm not 100% sure though...

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Not trying to hijack this thread if there is more to learn about adding film grain, but what is the best program for eliminating RED noise from underexposed shots? I have one whole scene where I'm going to have to push WAY up the scale to make usable. You know, like to ASA 2000. And yet I want it clean. Can this be done? And, if so, with what?

Thanks. . . and pardon for the intrusion.

Stephen

 

[Tom.Wong]

develop, and grade the clip at max resolution. down sample to HD (if it's for HD delivery) and that will eliminate a great deal of noise, combine with neat video plugin to scrub out the rest. this will help eliminate the plastic people effect.

if you are doing a 4k DI, i suggest a grading system, possibly the new da vinci 8 coming out that has built in noise reduction.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Not trying to hijack this thread if there is more to learn about adding film grain, but what is the best program for eliminating RED noise from underexposed shots? I have one whole scene where I'm going to have to push WAY up the scale to make usable. You know, like to ASA 2000. And yet I want it clean. Can this be done? And, if so, with what?

You can use a specialty company like Reliance Mediaworks in Burbank, who does a lot of proprietary work cleaning up problematic digital footage plagued by noise, under-exposure, and other issues. Reliance (formerly known as Lowry Digital) was credited doing this for Avatar and Social Network, but also works very quietly behind the scenes on a lot of other projects.

There are always trade-offs with any temporal grain-reduction system, particularly with image lag, blurring, softness, and so on. The best systems are non-real-time and allow you to do grain-reduction independently on black detail alone, or white detail alone, or even on a particular color. In some cases, I've been able to minimize the need to do grain reduction just with very careful color correction and secondaries. Many post houses use either the real-time Digital Vision HD-DVNR or similar systems built into the Nucoda, or render-based NR systems like those built into Baselight (and coming soon to DaVinci Resolve). But beware of the artifacts. Often, multiple passes of a light setting are much more effective than one heavy pass. The final image may also need some mild sharpening, just to get it to match other footage within the same sequence.

Note that you don't have to grain-reduce the entire film -- just the specific sequence involved. My advice would be to send a few seconds of footage out to various companies, have them do a test, and see how far they can go with it. If you're only delivering 1080p for home video, it's not that hard to do. I've seen some pretty miraculous stuff done with underexposed footage before, as much as 3 stops under.

 

[jake blackstone]

You can use a specialty company like Reliance Mediaworks in Burbank, who does a lot of proprietary work cleaning up problematic digital footage plagued by noise, under-exposure, and other issues. Reliance (formerly known as Lowry Digital) was credited doing this for Avatar and Social Network, but also works very quietly behind the scenes on a lot of other projects.

There are always trade-offs with any temporal grain-reduction system, particularly with image lag, blurring, softness, and so on. The best systems are non-real-time and allow you to do grain-reduction independently on black detail alone, or white detail alone, or even on a particular color. In some cases, I've been able to minimize the need to do grain reduction just with very careful color correction and secondaries. Many post houses use either the real-time Digital Vision HD-DVNR or similar systems built into the Nucoda, or render-based NR systems like those built into Baselight (and coming soon to DaVinci Resolve). But beware of the artifacts. Often, multiple passes of a light setting are much more effective than one heavy pass. The final image may also need some mild sharpening, just to get it to match other footage within the same sequence.

Note that you don't have to grain-reduce the entire film -- just the specific sequence involved. My advice would be to send a few seconds of footage out to various companies, have them do a test, and see how far they can go with it. If you're only delivering 1080p for home video, it's not that hard to do. I've seen some pretty miraculous stuff done with underexposed footage before, as much as 3 stops under.

Stephen usually likes a "do it yourself" solutions. For that, it seems, popular and inexpensive solution is Neat Video plugin.
BTW, an upcoming Resolve 8 NR is a real time NR and NOT a render type, typically found in other packages, like BL, Lustre or FM.