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.
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.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
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.