Grain... noise ? What is it and how to remove it ?

[Platos]

I have an older source, which, as i saw, has these "noise" which older movies often have (short sample below).

So i tried to use fluxsmooth (denoise). The "noise" went away, but i feel like also some sharpness is gone and textur (for example on the grey suit the old man at start wears).

In a second try i used SMDegrain, which does the job way better in my opinion. So it does reduce noise, but does not reduce sharpnes so much. But i still feel a bit, as it would also loose some sharpness.

So therefore i wonder, what this actually is. Is it noise or is it grain or what is it ? And what "should" you use in such a case for loosing as little sharpness as possible ?

It's only a 12s video, but still 44MB because it's not reencoded and the whole film is 33GB.

https://uploadnow.io/f/vQSs4Ln

Edit: After watching this video:

I would say my source is grain. So but what DeGrainer do you like most, if it is grain ?

[DB83]

Post your sample as an attachment direct to the forum. Try to avoid external hosters since the link will inevitably expire.

[Platos]

Ok, will do next time. But any advice for the Problem ?

[DB83]

There is, as illustrated here, another reason why external downloads should be avoided. And with a clip of only 44 mb - attachments up to 500 mb are allowed - there is no excuse. It is very easy to to download the software you do not need via the ads if you are not paying attention.

Anyway. Enough of the 'rant'


Is this movie a film source or video ? If it is film then a little grain can be expected. And if the original has already benefited from some cleaning >> grain/noise reduction << I would not do anything more to it. In fact I found it quite acceptable - seen a whole lot worse.

[Platos]

What is the difference between a film and a video?

It is from Disc and a direct copy of it (cut with avidemux without reencode). So i dont know, if they degrained it already on the bluray.

Its Leon le Profi from 1994.

And ok, but i dont like the "noise".

But is it noise or grain? What filter would you use, if you would like to make this away, but loose as little sharpness as possible? SMDegrain?

[DB83]

Film = originally shot on 35/70 mm or even lower celluloid stock

Video = shot digitally.


And according to Google it was indeed shot on film.


Grain is a personal preference. And since I do not see it I can not suggest any way to remove it. But my guess is that some degraining has already been done since 'modern' taste prefers a cleaner 'video look'. Any grain (or noise) removal is going to soften the image. That is unavoidable. That is why studios try not to overdo it. But for a better opinion you should also upload an 'after processing' sample.


Other opinion may vary.

[Platos]

Wait, you can't see that :O ?

But ok, i will test a bit with degrainer-filters, thanks.

And ok, you mean "that" film.

Edit: What Videobitrate do you use for a 1080p Video? I saw that the 5MBit/s is not enough for this video. It looses quite a bit of sharpness.

I believe it needs a higher Bitrate, when tehre is sth like grain. Because on newer Filmproductions (High Level) i have less loss in quality when using 5mbit.

[johnmeyer]

When it comes to grain reduction for media shot on celluloid, "less is more." Grain reduction can make things look really weird. Peter Jackson's amazing restoration of the Beatles 16mm film in the documentary "Get Back" was a technical tour de force, but the result definitely looked strange.

Also, when using lesser tools than he had available to him (e.g., plugins for AVISynth), you often end up with some pretty ugly artifacts. While it is true that you can encode grain-reduced film at a lower bitrate and still achieve the same quality, most of the other benefits are questionable.

I have done a LOT of film restoration, and over time, as I've learned more and also had a chance to look back at my earlier work, I have trended more and more to focusing on removing defects (like bad splices, dirt, gate weave, color fading, etc.) and not trying to make it look like something else by eliminating the grain or changing the framerate from 24 fps to 60 fps, etc.

It's personal preference, of course, but the things I mention simply make it look pristine (like a brand-new movie print) whereas the other things turn it into something that it never was.

[Platos]

Grain is maybe "natural" because of the "film", but in my opinion its still sth unwanted. It's a technical limitation. Same for noise in digital Camera.

Sure, it's up to the person, who watches/edits the film at the end.

But it is per definition unnatural, that it's "grainy", because when i look out of the window i don't see grain

But yeah, i will not "over-degrain" in my personal taste, because i even like sharpness more than no grain. So i will try to reduce it only so far i can live with sharpnes-loss.

But so far i did a lossless encode with SMDegrain and i like it. Sharpnes is a bit lower, but it's still good. But now i have to match a good Bitrate.

[Platos]

Update: But i have a question about audio-bitrate: This source has 2.8Mbit/s of audio bitrate (megabit, not kbit).

Im not so good at audio-things. Isn't it a bit high? Do you reencode such audio, which has so high bitrate? Because it uses a lot of Memory compared to the video (when i use 10mbit video for example).

[lollo]

An attempt with TemporalDegrain2.

Grain reduction, together with fine details removal.

https://imgsli.com/MTgzMjY2

compare.mp4

[Platos]

Thanks for testing.

Would you upload the filtered video (or send a link with PM) that i can make a screenshot by myself? Because then i can make a slider with my try and also my screenshots are bigger because of resolution of my monitor.

https://imgsli.com/MTgzMjcw

Edit: I did also a test with TemporalDegrain2 in Hybrid (default settings). It is very similair to my Try, but it does reduce grain more while have a very very slight better sharpnes (so at least as i could tell). So i will use TemporalDegrain2 probably.

On the other Hand its slower. Only 30FPS output on 60FPS RIFE.
SMDegrain does 70FPS (both with interpolation).

Hmm lets see what i take ^^

[johnmeyer]

Update: But i have a question about audio-bitrate: This source has 2.8Mbit/s of audio bitrate (megabit, not kbit).

Im not so good at audio-things. Isn't it a bit high? Do you reencode such audio, which has so high bitrate? Because it uses a lot of Memory compared to the video (when i use 10mbit video for example).

Audio is encoded with a certain number of bits per sample, usually 8, 16, or 24. 16 for CDs, 24 for higher end.

The analog waveform is sampled at a certain number of samples per second: 44,100 samples/second for CDs, and 48,000 samples per second for most video formats. Since there are two channels, you end up with this number of samples times two (i.e., one for each channel).

So, to get total bits per second, multiply samples times bits per sample and then multiply the result by two to get total for both channels.

Example:audio CD: 44,100 x 16 x 2 = 1,411,200 bits per second (1.4Mbps). For 24 bit 48,000 you get 2,304,000.

So, your 2,800,000 bps does seem a little high, but not massively so.

[Platos]

Hmm, but what is that thing with 128kbit/s, 192kbit/s and 320kbit/s (in music) ?

I mean that's way lower and i honestly dont hear a difference between 320kbit/s and 192kbit/s (or maybe i just had never good enough sources). But even if i would, 320kbit/s is still way lower than 1400kbits or even 2800kbits.

[jagabo]

SMDegrain(thsad=300, tr=2, PreFilter=4)

[lollo]

Would you upload the filtered video (or send a link with PM)

You can create it by yourself with a simple AviSynth script with

# plugins directory
plugins_dir="C:\Users\giuse\Documents\VideoSoft\MPEG\AviSynth\extFilters\"

	# FFmpegSource
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "ffms2_87bae19\x86\ffms2.dll")

	# TemporalDegrain2
Import(plugins_dir + "TemporalDegrain-v2.2.1_modGMa.avsi")
	# RgTools
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "RgTools-v1.0\x86\RgTools.dll")
	# MaskTools2
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "masktools2-v2.2.23\x86\masktools2.dll")
	# MVTools
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "mvtools-2.7.41-with-depans20200430\x86\mvtools2.dll")
	# FFT3DFilter
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "FFT3dFilter-v2.6\x86\fft3dfilter.dll")
	# FFTW
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "LoadDll\LoadDll.dll")
loadDll(plugins_dir + "fftw-3.3.5-dll32\libfftw3f-3.dll")

video_org=FFmpegSource2("Test kurz 1.mkv")

### degraining
degrained=video_org.TemporalDegrain2(degrainTR=3)

return(degrained)

In any case here the filtered output (compressed to x264, crf=17, preset=slow):

degrained.mp4

[Platos]

Thank you both. I think i like TemporalDegrain2 more than SMDegrain. But it's more than half as fast on my PC. Did it with hybrid.

Strange is, that your video lollo on my end has black bars (so the video is smaller). I thought that's because of the screenshot-Resolution, but it's the video itself.

But how i said, i did it with hybrid and it looks very very slightly better for my taste with temporaldegrain2.

Thanks.

[Platos]

Update: But i have a question about audio-bitrate: This source has 2.8Mbit/s of audio bitrate (megabit, not kbit).

Im not so good at audio-things. Isn't it a bit high? Do you reencode such audio, which has so high bitrate? Because it uses a lot of Memory compared to the video (when i use 10mbit video for example).

Audio is encoded with a certain number of bits per sample, usually 8, 16, or 24. 16 for CDs, 24 for higher end.

The analog waveform is sampled at a certain number of samples per second: 44,100 samples/second for CDs, and 48,000 samples per second for most video formats. Since there are two channels, you end up with this number of samples times two (i.e., one for each channel).

So, to get total bits per second, multiply samples times bits per sample and then multiply the result by two to get total for both channels.

Example:audio CD: 44,100 x 16 x 2 = 1,411,200 bits per second (1.4Mbps). For 24 bit 48,000 you get 2,304,000.

So, your 2,800,000 bps does seem a little high, but not massively so.

And i had a look on mediainfo and it says 8 channel, 24bit, 48khz. So only for interest.

But i think i let it there.

[Selur]

For general amusement, I attached what codeformer does. *gig*

Cu Selur

[Platos]

what is codeformer ? Looks funny. He has different glasses

But i decided now to take SMDegrain
In some scenes i liked it more but when i watch the film on tv i see actually not a very big difference between 10mbit/s SMDegrain and TemporalDegrain2. Because SMDegrain is 2.5 times faster, i used this (and 60FPS RIFE 4.6).

But both makes good results i think.

[johnmeyer]

Hmm, but what is that thing with 128kbit/s, 192kbit/s and 320kbit/s (in music) ?

I mean that's way lower and i honestly dont hear a difference between 320kbit/s and 192kbit/s (or maybe i just had never good enough sources). But even if i would, 320kbit/s is still way lower than 1400kbits or even 2800kbits.

That is for compressed audio, like MP3, where the compression algorithm throws away 90% (or more) of the original file and hopes you won't notice. By doing this they can encode with about 10% of the bits needed for "full fidelity" music. The result is music that doesn't sound as good. It doesn't take super hearing to tell the difference, but most people don't care these days.

When I was a wee lad in the 1950s and 60s, we had Hi-Fi showrooms where people shopped to get the best quality audio they could afford. You could listen to a record played on different record players, through different preamps, different power amps, and different speakers, and create a system that sounded great to you.

These days people listed to compressed audio through wireless earbuds and are satisfied. Yes, technology does let you get to a certain level of quality without spending much money, but my point is that no one cares anymore about what really fine fidelity sounds like. [Thus endeth the rant].

[jagabo]

But i decided now to take SMDegrain
In some scenes i liked it more but when i watch the film on tv i see actually not a very big difference between 10mbit/s SMDegrain and TemporalDegrain2. Because SMDegrain is 2.5 times faster, i used this (and 60FPS RIFE 4.6).

But both makes good results i think.

Both have many settings that effect the strength and speed of the noise reduction. Read the docs. Experiment with different settings.

[Selur]

CodeFormer = machien learning filter which is meant to enhance faces (https://github.com/HolyWu/vs-codeformer https://github.com/sczhou/CodeFormer)

[Cornucopia]

I would posit that (a small amount of) grain is basically working like dither, and so is good for maintaining analog naturalism of the signal, and degraining is making the signal artificial/synthetic.
I would also posit that the choice of appropriate amount of grain to use was already decided by the producers, who know what they're doing.
I have also spoken here often on ways to more easily tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio, and why you may or may not be perceptive of it.

But I expect you'll pick your own denoise NR settings regardless.

Just my 2¢ you didn't ask for.

Scott

[lollo]

I would posit that (a small amount of) grain is basically working like dither, and so is good for maintaining analog naturalism of the signal, and degraining is making the signal artificial/synthetic.
I would also posit that the choice of appropriate amount of grain to use was already decided by the producers, who know what they're doing.

I completely agree, and for this specific video I would not denoise/degrain at all, and I much prefere the original look.

Reducing the noise/grain of an analog capture, such as VHS, is more effective and appropriate, because acts on "unwanted" media defects.

[johnmeyer]

I would posit that (a small amount of) grain is basically working like dither, and so is good for maintaining analog naturalism of the signal, and degraining is making the signal artificial/synthetic.
I would also posit that the choice of appropriate amount of grain to use was already decided by the producers, who know what they're doing.
I have also spoken here often on ways to more easily tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio, and why you may or may not be perceptive of it.

But I expect you'll pick your own denoise NR settings regardless.

Just my 2¢ you didn't ask for.

Scott

What he said.

[Platos]

I watched now the movie and in my taste it was a huge improvement. And while watching i never thought it looks less natural. So for me is that a go-to in older movies with grain.

And i did it with SMDegrain and it worked well. 10MBit/s, but i could use more, but the file was already 18GB with 10Mbit/s and 60FPS RIFE.

CodeFormer = machien learning filter which is meant to enhance faces (https://github.com/HolyWu/vs-codeformer https://github.com/sczhou/CodeFormer)

Ahh, yes it does makes very clear faces. But at the end it's like a face from somebody else xD

[Platos]

Wrong thread