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Actual film grain (i.e., photochemical) is arguably a valid source of information. You can frame it as noise, but does provide additional information content th

by bob1029 11mo ago

Actual film grain (i.e., photochemical) is arguably a valid source of information. You can frame it as noise, but does provide additional information content that our visual system can work with. Removing real film grain from content and then recreating it parametrically on the other side is not the same thing as directly encoding it. You are killing a lot of information. It is really hard to quantify exactly how we perceive this sort of information so it's easy to evade the consequences of screwing with it. Selling the Netflix board on an extra X megabits/s per streamer to keep genuine film grain that only 1% of the customers will notice is a non-starter.

VerifiedReports 11mo ago
Exactly. In the case of stuff shot on film, there's little to be done except increase bitrate if you want maximal fidelity. In the case of fake grain that's added to modern footage, I'm calling out the absurdity of adding it, analyzing it, removing it, and putting yet another approximation of it back in.
- breve 11mo ago
  > I'm calling out the absurdity of adding it, analyzing it, removing it, and putting yet another approximation of it back in Why is it absurd? The entire encoding process is an approximation of the original image. Lossy compression inevitably throws away information to make the file size smaller. And the creation of the original video is entirely separated from the distribution of it. It'll be stored losslessly for one thing. The only question that matters is does the image look good enough after encoding. If it doesn't look good enough then no one will watch it. If it does look good enough then you've got a viable video distribution service that minimizes its bandwidth costs.
  - VerifiedReports 11mo ago
    "Lossy compression inevitably throws away information to make the file size smaller." So? That fact only emphasizes the absurdity and loss potential here: 1. Acquire "clean" digital footage. 2. Add fake grain to said footage 3. Compress the grainy footage with lossy compression, wasting a bunch of the data on fake detail that you just added. 4. Analyze the footage to determine the character of the fake grain, calculate parameters to approximate it later with other fake grain 5. Strip out the fake grain, with potential for loss of some original image details 6. Re-add fake grain with the calculated parameters If you don't see the absurdity there, I don't know what to tell you.
    - breve 11mo ago
      No, the source material is stored losslessly. Many different effects will be applied to the source material to make the moving images look the way the director wants them to look. The creation of the original video is separate from the distribution of the video. In distribution the video will be encoded to many formats and many bitrates to support playback on as many devices at as many network speeds as possible. The distributed video will never exactly match the original. There simply isn't the bandwidth. The goal of video encoding is always just to make it look good enough.

by bob1029 11mo ago

VerifiedReports 11mo ago

Exactly. In the case of stuff shot on film, there's little to be done except increase bitrate if you want maximal fidelity. In the case of fake grain that's added to modern footage, I'm calling out the absurdity of adding it, analyzing it, removing it, and putting yet another approximation of it back in.

breve 11mo ago
> I'm calling out the absurdity of adding it, analyzing it, removing it, and putting yet another approximation of it back in Why is it absurd? The entire encoding process is an approximation of the original image. Lossy compression inevitably throws away information to make the file size smaller. And the creation of the original video is entirely separated from the distribution of it. It'll be stored losslessly for one thing. The only question that matters is does the image look good enough after encoding. If it doesn't look good enough then no one will watch it. If it does look good enough then you've got a viable video distribution service that minimizes its bandwidth costs.
- VerifiedReports 11mo ago
  "Lossy compression inevitably throws away information to make the file size smaller." So? That fact only emphasizes the absurdity and loss potential here: 1. Acquire "clean" digital footage. 2. Add fake grain to said footage 3. Compress the grainy footage with lossy compression, wasting a bunch of the data on fake detail that you just added. 4. Analyze the footage to determine the character of the fake grain, calculate parameters to approximate it later with other fake grain 5. Strip out the fake grain, with potential for loss of some original image details 6. Re-add fake grain with the calculated parameters If you don't see the absurdity there, I don't know what to tell you.
  - breve 11mo ago
    No, the source material is stored losslessly. Many different effects will be applied to the source material to make the moving images look the way the director wants them to look. The creation of the original video is separate from the distribution of the video. In distribution the video will be encoded to many formats and many bitrates to support playback on as many devices at as many network speeds as possible. The distributed video will never exactly match the original. There simply isn't the bandwidth. The goal of video encoding is always just to make it look good enough.