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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Should I be adding grain?

Christopher Grant Harvey

Christopher Grant Harvey

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Hi,

As the titles suggests, should I be adding a small amount of grain to the very clean images? Is anyone doing it?

I guess this is subjective and more of an aesthetic thing, but I have done some tests with a small amount and it takes the sharp edge off the image slightly.
 
this is something I've yet to try, but I've seen some other's that have done it and I personally really like the way it looks. You'd probably have to experiment to get the right look, but if you're into the idea, it's not a bad thing.

Color has a grain filter I want to try sometime. Has anyone used that?
 
Grain can help in a number of ways...

It can make an image seem sharper

It can help tie the room together (like a good rug)

It also can allow the audience to feel differently about the subject matter..

Unfortunatly I've never found a grain plugin I really liked.. Film's image is formed out of grain.. it isn't like noise that comes out of shadows (like video)..

I've had reasonable success applying grain filters at a resolution higher than my final output..

Michael L
 
The problem is a lot of grain (noise) filters are unable to simulate the characteristics of film grain effectively. As a still frame, you can make it look pretty good, but once the motion starts, the similarities start to go away. Obviously video noise and film grain are two different things, but some filters do a better job than others at achieving a similar look. I'm sure there are some very good algorithms out there on the high end that do it really well, but probably nothing in my arsenal. For now, it's just keep it subtle as someone mentioned.
 
grain vs. compression issues

grain vs. compression issues

With everything getting compressed it can be a very bad idea to add any form of noise or grain to your images.

Part of the compression process for making DVD and Blu-Ray is to reduce the noise in the areas of low contrast, so whatever grain you add will become uneven.

Also in compression systems used for the frame rate for all parts of the frame is not the same, some parts are only updated at about 6fps to 8fps, so blocks of grain will "stand still" and become more and less sharp, it looks like they are blinking.

Make some test footage and burn a DVD to see what type of issues can develop. With broadcast going compressed and being recompressed for cable etc. and then being compressed again if people want to save what they get, extra noise in the images increases bandwidth and so can reduce the refresh rate of action making the motion freeze and stutter, maybe.
 
Adding grain is very output format specific. Too much grain on files going to dvd makes compression harder, by the time you get down to little online clips the less the better for easy compression.
I've been using a bit of grain on clean shots at broadcast size to ease the transitions from more grainy slightly underexposed or tungsten corrected footage to the clean shots.
Nicest though most expensive grain I've had is by outputting Red footage to film using camera stock ie 35mm vision 5217.

Edit: Dan beat me to it about the compression, your absolutely right, testing, testing and more testing.

Marcus Struzina
 
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