Thomson's new Film Grain Technology for HD DVD endorsed by SMPTE [Update 2]
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jul 6th 2006 5:40AM
posted Jul 6th 2006 5:40AM
Thomson announced last night that their Film Grain Technology for MPEG-4 has (finally) been approved for mandatory inclusion in HD DVD products. We say finally because they've been showing this off since 2004, and it was originally not approved by the DVD Forum for mandatory inclusion back in February 2005. No word on what has changed between then and now, or exactly when the Steering Committee met and approved it, but it's in there now (See below). Currently this technology is only included for use with the h.264 codec, although they indicate it could be added to support other compression solutions, like VC-1 for example.They remove all trace of film grain before the movie is compressed, then the player recreates the effect during playback. Beyond just adding a different visual feel, they claim this will also enhance compression and lower necessary bitrates for high definition content further. This AVS Forum thread provides much useful information on the effect of film grain and Thomson's technology. The one thing we're not totally clear on at the moment, is whether or not this technology is already present in shipping Toshiba HD-A1, HD-XA1 and RCA HDV5000 HD DVD players. Even though it wasn't mandatory it could be present optionally or need to be added through a firmware upgrade. The press release indicates the aforementioned players will be manufactured with the technology present, as well as Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on however it doesn't make mention of players already on shelves or in homes, leading to our confusion. We also have no word on whether or not this will be user-optional for those who prefer their titles without it.
We'll have to wait until titles are available using this technology to judge for ourselves if it makes any noticeable change. It will also be interesting to see how many other technologies are added to HD DVD and/or Blu-ray after players have launched.
Update: Rochelle from Thomson's PR firm responded to us (thanks!), and confirmed that Film Grain Technology is already a part of both shipping HD DVD players.
Update #2: Although it was not approved during the February 2005 meeting for mandatory inclusion, it was approved later by a letter vote in April, and has been a part of the HD DVD spec ever since. With Thomson/RCA working with the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), this can be more easily adopted by content producers, as the hardware required to play it is already rolling out. We've also updated the title to reflect the announcement.
Like Edge Enhancement, I am failing to see how this technology is suppose to be consumer-desired. Why would you want to remove film grain befor compression AND then introduce an artificial grain upon player decompression?
Most people actually LIKE original movie grain and the last thing they would want is some questionable technology removing it and then mimicing it on playback.
Agreed with the first poster. I do not want anything artifcial in anything that I am watching.
The more I hear about HDDVD and Blu-Ray, the more negative it gets.
Personally I like it. The picture does not look artificial to me. Isn't that what HD is all about, to make the picture clearer, sharper, less noise and more detail? Let's face it, movies today are all artificial. Everything is a blue or green screen, then they add to it. Eventually they won't even need actors. It will all be computer-generated.
But to each his own. It should be left up to common sense when to apply the filter, and when to leave the film untouched.
why in the world would they do this, and why in the world would we want it?? I thought what was so great about the new video formats is that we wouldn't need to compress anything. Now they're going to remove grain?
Wait I take that back. I like it without the grain. I mis-read the article. I say either keep the original grain, or get rid of it entirely (clearer-sharper). No sense in altering the original, then try to make it look like the original just to save a few megabytes.
"I do not want anything artifcial in anything that I am watching."
To say this is a pretty broad statement... The grain in film itself is an artifiact of higher speed exposure films. While sometimes it is there intentionaly for artistic impact (like in "Sin City" for example), for the most part it exists due to the limitations of film media.
A lot of movies have a lot of "artificial" frames ie. special effects. I view this tech as just another version of this...and it sounds the studios will have the option of using this or not on specific titles where appropriate.
And it's bound to be short lived any way given all the digital filming that's happening these days and the eventual obsolescence of film...The existance of 'film grain' will eventually be replaced by 'noise'.
-h
Some filmakers like the look of grain, it is an artistic decision.
BUT it is hard to compress grain, you loose real detail because the codecs can't easily decern grain from detail. You also waste storage because you must store A LOT more info to preserve detail and grain alike.
Grain is not like detail, artificial grain will look the same to your eye, it is esentially a form of visual white-noise. Who cares is it is the identical grain each time played or to the original film. The original grain was also randomly created and is an artifact mostly of trying to make film faster and more light senstive, but one we've become use to.
Grain lowers detail in stills, but it averages out over the course of a few frames and our eyes extract the relevent details. With this technology when you pause, you probably would have the option of stripping the grain for added detail.
Though it is an artistic decision in some cases to have grain (sometimes it's a cost of film and cost of lighting necessity) some discs and machines might allow a grain override for people that prefer less grain.
Again, don't fear artificial grain, its all random anyway. This will increase actual detail and save storage both. A Win-Win.
This sounds fine on fairly general application but I wouldn't want this technology applied on every disc. Most DPs choose film stocks for a particular grain. Removing the noise on the luminance channel (typical grain) smooths out the image and usually results in a loss of detail even after edge enhancements. Reapplying the grain at the player only seems to remove additional detail rather than improving the previous image quality. I guess the question comes down to is how well the artifical grain generation works on the player side. Does it work on a nonlinear scale similar to film grain noise? If the film uses different film stocks throughout the process can it handle that change (such as Natural Born Killers)? I have my doubts from communication theory classes. You're removing information, then compressing with a lossy compression, then adding noise at the last step. It seems more like you could create the effect of more information but it would in fact be less.
I do not understand why one yould want to remove it AND add it back in later. This isn't a question or removing it or not, or of artificially adding grain that wasn't there originally, but rather pre-processing it to remove the grain AND post-processing it to add in artificial grain.
If you are going to have grain on the output stage why remove the original grain in the first place? And if you adding artificial grain later, how do you know where to put it unless you are keeping record of where you removed it in the first place. I'm sure that isn't trivial to do.
How many want a heart, kidney, lung, or liver transplant knowing you will wind up with the same freaking organ you wanted to get rid of!?!
The image with grain looks a bit worse imo...
Way I understand it: the loss of Film Grain is one of the "casualities" of the compresion process. The H.264 codec allows for better compression quality, thus we get our films downloaded faster, more on a DVD, etc...However, when you see the Compressed film, it looks much "softer". Now, some people don't care about that smoother softer look, and in fact, as some baove say, it is preferable to some. However, some people want to see the film with a certain "look" that just feels more like classic film look, and that is what this technology does, it returns what HAD to be stripped out (the original grain), without making the file size so much larger. By including it in players, this gives filmmakers who want to include the grainy texture the security of knowing there is way to embrace new compression technology but still offer their film as they wish it to be seen, and it gives consumers the opportunity to select that option, if they so choose - sort of like Dolby Surround sound does for audio...I think my read on this is accurate, but if anyone knows better, let me know.