zlacker

I avoid av1 downloads when possible because I don’t want to have to figure out how to disable film grain synthesis and then deal with whatever damage that causes to apparent quality on a video that was encoded with it in mind. Like I just don’t want any encoding that supports that, if I can stay away from it.

>>phanta+(OP)
In MPV it's just "F1 vf toggle format:film-grain=no" in the input config. And I prefer AV1 because of this, almost everything looks better without that noise.

You can also include "vf=format:film-grain=no" in the config itself to start with no film grain by default.

>>phanta+(OP)
What's wrong with film grain synthesis? Most film grain in modern films is "fake" anyway (The modern VFX pipeline first removes grain, then adds effects, and lastly re-adds fake grain), so instead of forcing the codec to try to compress lots of noise (and end up blurring lots of it away), we can just have the codec encode the noisless version and put the noise on after.

>>phanta+(OP)
With HEVC you just don't have the option to disable film grain because it's burned into the video stream.

>>Wowfun+94
I’m not looking to disable film grain, if it’s part of the source.

>>coppsi+E3
I watch almost everything in Infuse on Apple TV or in my browser, though.

>>adgjls+M3
I watch a lot of stuff from the first 110ish years of cinema. For the most recent 25, and especially 15… yeah I dunno, maybe, but easier to just avoid it.

I do sometimes end up with av1 for streaming-only stuff, but most of that looks like shit anyway, so some (more) digital smudging isn’t going to make it much worse.

>>phanta+K5
Even for pre-digital era movies, you want film grain. You just want it done right (which not many places do to be fair).

The problem you see with AV1 streaming isn't the film grain synthesis; it's the bitrate. Netflix is using film grain synthesis to save bandwidth (e.g. 2-5mbps for 1080p, ~20mbps for 4k), 4k bluray is closer to 100mbps.

If the AV1+FGS is given anywhere close to comparable bitrate to other codecs (especially if it's encoding from a non-compressed source like a high res film scan), it will absolutely demolish a codec that doesn't have FGS on both bitrate and detail. The tech is just getting a bad rap because Netflix is aiming for minimal cost to deliver good enough rather than maximal quality.

>>phanta+j5
Does AV1 add it if it's not part of the source?

>>Mashim+pn
I dunno, but if there is grain in the source it may erase it (discarding information) then invent new grain (noise) later.

>>phanta+W91
I'm skeptical of this (I think they avoid adding grain to the AV1 stream which they add to the other streams--of course all grain is artificial in modern times), but even if true--like, all grain is noise! It's random noise from the sensor. There's nothing magical about it.

>>Wowfun+Fv1
The grain’s got randomness because distribution and size of grains is random, but it’s not noise, it’s the “resolution limit” (if you will) of the picture itself. The whole picture is grain. The film is grain. Displaying that is accurately displaying the picture. Erasing it for compression’s sake is tossing out information, and adding it back later is just an effect to add noise.

I’m ok with that for things where I don’t care that much about how it looks (do I give a shit if I lose just a little detail on Happy Gilmore? Probably not) and agree that faking the grain probably gets you a closer look to the original if you’re gonna erase the grain for better compression, but if I want actual high quality for a film source then faked grain is no good, since if you’re having to fake it you definitely already sacrificed a lot of picture quality (because, again, the grain is the picture, you only get rid of it by discarding information from the picture)

>>phanta+NI1
If you’re watching something from the 70s, sure. I would hope synthesized grain isn’t being used in this case.

But for anything modern, the film grain was likely added during post-production. So it really is just random noise, and there’s no reason it can’t be recreated (much more efficiently) on the client-side.