AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening • Hacker News Board

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#181

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:27 AM UTC

supertrope wrote: post #75

UltraSane wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Film grain and 24fps are both examples of people being far too attached to the technical limitations of film.

23.976 fps has been put on a pedestal as the "correct" look. Just look at the reaction to The Hobbit. However it does provide some objective advantages. 60 fps requires more lighting. Adding more lights means more electric setup and heat for actors in heavy makeup and costume. In post production that's more frames to edit.

If that were an argument then frame rates would have increased with more efficient lighting.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#182

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:30 AM UTC

UltraSane wrote: post #128

supertrope wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

23.976 fps has been put on a pedestal as the "correct" look. Just look at the reaction to The Hobbit. However it does provide some objective advantages. 60 fps requires more lighting. Adding more lights means more electric setup and heat for actors in heavy makeup and costume. In post production that's more frames to edit.

Isn't it strange how people accepted much bigger changes like sound and color but are now balking at higher frame rates?

Those came much earlier in the history of film and have a much more significant qualitative impact.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#183

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:41 AM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #5

Yup, yet another example of the thing I'll never stop finding fascinating: ANY noticeable percieved "flaw" in any creative media will eventually become an aesthetic choice.

I don't think it's just that here. Our brains simply prefer high entropy signals over low entropy ones. It's why mobile phones (and digital cameras before them) use sharpen filters to the point where the result looks unnatural.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#184

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:42 AM UTC

Mashimo wrote: post #163

jccalhoun wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this in a few things the last few years. The top and bottom of the shot are out of focus and it is super distracting to me. Maybe it is meant to draw the eye to the middle of the frame.

Yup, notice that as well. A blurry vignette. Needle sharp in the center, but objects that are the same distance are blurry at the edges of the frame. At first I thought they use vintage lenses, but it's probably done in post. I sometimes do something similar on photos, where I darken the edges a bit.

> I sometimes do something similar on photos, where I darken the edges a bit.

Which is also an emulation of the shortcomings of older/worse technology.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#185

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:46 AM UTC

mmastrac wrote: post #84

smusamashah wrote: post #61

The original grain that is captured is actually a detail and not total random noise. I believe you can make up the vague sense of original scene if you could somehow extract that grain/noise alone. It's like reducing an image to tiny dots with dithering (reminds of Atinkson dithering). Those grains are not a noise, they are a detail, actual data. That's why real grain looks good IMO.

If you extract the grain (e.g. by subtracting a blurred version of the image), the result contains mostly noise, not meaningful scene information outside of some variation according to image brightness. Film grain is random, so the extracted "grain layer" doesn’t encode original image detail but film grain itself encodes relative lightness in its _density_.

Mostly noise but not just noise. There is a reason why quality de-noising is a hard problem and the lost information becomes more apparent for videos where our brain is better able to extract it from the original noise.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#186

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:48 AM UTC

lossolo wrote: post #105

When I watch an 80 GB 4K movie from Blu-ray, the last thing I want is film grain, which makes it look like a VHS recording from the 90s.

Film grain (real or artificial) is nothing like VHS artifacts.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#187

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:49 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #82

kelsey98765431 wrote: post #26

happier and happier about leaving behind digital media to return to physical. to me this is literally slop. i want the uncompressed file stop selling me stepped on product

Your statement makes me think that one of the following is true: 1. You prefer Betamax or VHS to digital media (highly unlikely) 2. You own laserdiscs (limited to 480i) 3. You own 35mm prints of film. Since all other formats film has been made available on are both digital media and compressed.

> 2. You own laserdiscs (limited to 480i)

Down-scaling to 480i is also a form of compression so you can discount that one.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#188

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:52 AM UTC

recursive wrote: post #95

kelsey98765431 wrote: post #26

happier and happier about leaving behind digital media to return to physical. to me this is literally slop. i want the uncompressed file stop selling me stepped on product

Uncompressed 4k video is ~5Gbps (3840 * 2160 * 3 * 24 * 8). A 2-hour movie clocks in at about 4.3TB. (3840 * 2160 * 3 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 2) All that is 24fps. That's without audio, which I assume you also want to be uncompressed.

Not that it changes the argument but most movies are not 16:9 aspect ratio so don't need to make use of 2160 pixels height.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#189

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:53 AM UTC

recursive wrote: post #168

fc417fc802 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF even as bloated as 48/24 FLAC is it's a rounding error at that point.

But FLAC is compressed. Don't forget 13 channels. Only the best! Probably 192 khz.

Even though op wrote "uncompressed" you should be able to deduce from context that they meant not lossy compressed.

Re: AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

#190

Post by account42 » Fri, Jul 04, 2025, 10:56 AM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #43

ConanRus wrote: post #31

Everything is fake now. I want a technology which works with a raw film scans, not even compressing them to JPEG, which is a 1st step in loosing the details BTW. Motion detection, key frames, delta frames - fine. But with a lossless video. On a Blu Ray off course, i don't care much about streaming.

A 4K/24p film encoded with Apple ProRes 4444 XQ (not even ProRes RAW) is 716 GB per hour, so you would need to swap a total of 30 Blu-ray discs once every 4 minutes in order to watch a 2 hour movie.

UHD discs used for 4K movies today already store much more than 24 GB per disc.