Thomson launches HD AVC encoding tools for Blu-ray
by Richard Lawler 
posted Feb 28th 2008 at 1:14PM
Thomson's Tiger AVC encoder that it has been using in house for the last couple of years, is now available for sale to interested Blu-ray (and HD DVD) compression and authoring facilities. Including Thomson's film grain adjustment technology among other parts of a "secret sauce" Thomson says results in better looking MPEG-4 / h.264 encoded movies. Packaged as the Nexcode HD AVC Encoder, its a full hardware and software solution built to scale to business requirements. No word on who exactly will use this technology, but as long as our HDM is artifact-free, we're not too concerned how it got that way.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mr. E @ Feb 28th 2008 2:10PM
Sorry, but film grain is NOT an artifact! Give me the cleanest possible transfer of the film, including the grain which is integral to the look of the movie. Remove any scratches/hairs/dirt, but don't do any noise reduction or edge enhancement to "enhance" (but actually degrade) the picture. THAT is my idea of a top notch HD transfer.
Mark @ Feb 28th 2008 2:37PM
Their tool is going to cost studios 100k to use it!
Charles @ Feb 28th 2008 10:18PM
Sorry, but CineVision has done this already.
Adding film grain without compromising video quality was a special feature designed for HD DVD. You could encode an ultra clean movie like 300 (it was shot on HD cameras) and then have the player add random grain to your liking. This way you wouldn't have to add the grain in post (as they did) and have to spend extra bits encoding it.
friolator @ Feb 29th 2008 5:47PM
it's extremely common in high end CGI compositing to strip all grain from film images, merge film and CG stuff together, then re-apply a grain profile to the output. Happens all the time. it's how CG stuff can be made to look realistic, and how it's blended in with live action seamlessly. The grain isn't necessarily artificial - it's possible to create a grain profile that mimics actual film grain. The advantage to this process is more efficient encoding (read: fewer artifacts). In the end, you'd never know.