Lyris Lite :: Film grain is not your enemy

Film grain: "why would I want to see that?" That's a phrase that gets used a lot on the AVS Forum whenever someone mentions this particular characteristic. Some people actually consider film grain to be a fault, rather than something that films just inherently have.

A lot of this seems to stem from the confusion over this point: grain and noise are not the same thing. Especially on standard definition video, they can end up looking similar, so it's easy to see where the confusion came from. But film grain is a characteristic of some types of film stocks - some film reels are grainier than others. If the directors don't want to use grainy stock, they don't have to. It is a characteristic of some types of film and is partly a stylistic choice, the same way that visible brush strokes are a characteristic of some types of painting, and the same way that a little bit of microphone feedback and audience noise are characteristics of a live recording of a rock band. Noise, on the other hand, is generally unwanted and is an electronic side-effect of video, not film. We're watching Films on Video for convenience above anything else, after all.

Back to the question. A lot of people once again misunderstand this: I don't especially WANT to see film grain. I mean, there are some all-digital HD movies that look fantastic - look at "Corpse Bride", for example! The only things that moves are the characters, there's absolutely no background movement to the picture at all. But what people need to understand is that some films are grainy ON PURPOSE. The example I always use is "Minority Report" - the filmmakers must have chosen to film on grainy stock to achieve a certain visual effect. Now I'm sorry to be this blunt, but saying that some grain-removing video transfer technician knows better than the filmmakers themselves is just plain obnoxious. What right do we have to start messing around with what they made?

Now, arty debate is one thing, but here's the best reason of all. Removing film grain leaves artefacts in the picture. Textbook example: the movie "Thirteen". It was filmed on grainy 16mm film stock, presumably because of the "gritty" subject matter. 20th Century Fox released this on DVD in America and the transfer had been grain-reduced. It looked like shit, to be blunt. The type of grain on the film was so heavy that it could never be effectively removed, so background details dragged, and whenever characters turned their heads, they looked as if they had bad skin burns. A few months later, the film was released on DVD in the UK (pictured right) by Universal, who hold the rights over here, without obnoxious film grain reduction. You don't need me to tell you that the UK version looks much, much better. It looks like a film - and the film that the directors made, at that.

Yes, trying to remove film grain creates problems, so if it's there, it should be left alone. For someone like me, it's really annoying to read people on forums - people that have obviously spent so much money on this expensive AV equipment - complaining about it. I'd never get snooty at anyone for simply not knowing about this sort of thing, because that would just be elitist. But when people know all about this subject but are adamant that their view of what someone else's film should look like is right, and should be held above the director's intentions, it makes you think that these are people who don't care about films at all and only use pricey home cinema devices as boxes to impress their friends. "I don't care if it creates artefacts because I can't see them, and I don't care if it throws away detail because I don't really care about this stuff, and I don't care if it's not what the filmmaker intended". Makes me pissed! That's a lot of un-caring for something I'm so interested in!

In addition to that - if anyone wants film grain reduction, they are more than welcome to enable it on their own TV. Most TVs have Noise Reduction options which are also effective at removing most grain patterns, meaning that people who can't stand seeing a true representation of the film or simply don't like the look of the grain can turn on the NR and see the film the way they enjoy most, without grain and with the associated processing artefacts. I totally support the idea of people being able to do whatever they want to the quality of the disc that they've paid money for, in the comfort of their own home, that harms nobody (unless that person is a reviewer, perhaps). What I absolutely can't stand is selfish people asking for the picture to actually be degraded to meet their unrealistic standards, and consequently spoiling it for everyone else - just because they're too lazy to turn on their TV's Noise Reduction!

Rant over. I had to write this, I just can't for the life of me understand why someone who takes a strong interest in watching films would complain about film grain. A retro video-gaming community that can't stand looking at visible pixels and would rather rub vaseline on their TV sets to blur them - let's have that next!

Problem is, even specialized press behave like this, at least here in Italy. A typical comment: this is a good DVD, the film grain is nearly invisible!

"A retro video-gaming community that can't stand looking at visible pixels and would rather rub vaseline on their TV sets"

Funny! :D
Oh wait, you weren't joking... 2xSal, Eagle, bilinear filtering, interpolation, must-polish-that-320x240...

Oh wow, have you seen those old game filters? What a mess! If they please some people though and we can turn them off, that's fine.

Interesting article Lyris. I always thought Film Grain was something bad. But now I understand its not a bad thing at all!

Just to be sure I know what Film Grain is, its the Fuzziness of the picture right?

It can look fuzzy, yeah, but that's usually only if the picture has been blurred (which often happens in Standard Definition). Most types of film grain look like the example I posted at the very top of the article, a (usually) subtle moving effect over the picture. It can look a little gritty.

In fact on film, the entire picture is made up of grain particles. You can see what they look like magnified here:
http://www.imx.nl/photosite/technical/Filmbasics/grainshapes.jpg

Now that I think of it, software video players (the official Divx player, for example) offer the possibility to apply a "movie effect" to mpeg2/4, avi and so on - that's to say they emulate film grain. So what's the problem, just put this feature into hardware players and voilà, grain is back with a vengeance upon blurred pictures! (sinister laughing in the background)

Yeah, insane isn't it - why not just leave it in in the first place and make Noise Reduction the optional extra.

I couldnt agree more with your so called rant. I am a professional photographer and absolutly love film grain. Some of my favorite transfers are ripe with it like sleepy hollow hich is actually a cross processed neg and that actually drastically increases both contrats and grain and throws colors out of whack. Anyways I too have seen far too many posts on AV forums where people are complaining about grain and how this picture looks stunning because it has no grain etc...

The films should never be tampered with unless the director has given his approval to do so. Some of you may think that screwing around with the properties of a transfer doesnt effect the overall viewing of the picture and your dead wrong. Grain plays a serious role, as does everything else associated with a transfer, in how a movie is viewed and the overall felling the film gives to the viewer.

So leave the grain alone and letthe directors vision stand. If they want thier picture to look grainy then they should have the right to keep it that way for home viewing. The people that think they know more abot film than the people making the film should get out of the business period.

Its like the people in photography that frame thier prints behind glare free glass, which in turn blurs the crap out of the picture. What are you doing?

In the end grain is your friend and I personally cant stand transfers that are completly devoid of it. It takes the cinema out of cinema.

Great article!!

For the record, visible pixels in retro VG isn't something their makers intended, but rather something they had to cope with. Also, 320x240 looks much worse on a 19" LCD than on a 14" (really 13.2") CRT. So, being the film grain fan that I am, I also usually use 3xSSAL for them DOTT and FullThrottle.

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