What's your "go-to" for grain reduction while preserving detail?

osgZach · 20th May 2013, 16:53

Kind of scratching my head on this. I'm looking for options though.

I am trying to encode my Jurassic Park BD down to a manageable size, although I don't want to do a 2-pass and restrict it that way. I'm worried that would destroy it more trying to achieve a target bitrate than just trying to scrub some of the grain out.

That being said, I did a CRF 18 encode w/x264 and the file size came out at an unexpected mere 1GB reduction from the source VC-1 stream (!). It's eating up a LOT of bitrate.

This is a very, very grainy film. Which I wasn't expecting because although I haven't watched it for a long time, I remember the image from VHS and DVD being a lot cleaner, while still sharp and with lots of detail.

I am currenty doing another test with HQDN3D (all ripbot offers) but I don't get much grain reduction before I start seeing detail loss (tires, Grants pant wrinkles) and would like to experiment with other filters.

Ideally a filter that focuses on the grain while removing a lot (I want -some- grain left) and not killing / oversmoothing the image as a whole. Something light on CPU (I already use brutal encoding settings) as well.

I usually do not degrain films (Inception somewhat grainy but jesus, that came out at 7.5GB w/audio.). So I have little experience in this area. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

(If folks want a couple clips to play around with, I will provide. Just ask.)

20th May 2013, 16:53	#1 \| Link
osgZach Registered User Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: USA Posts: 676	What's your "go-to" for grain reduction while preserving detail? Kind of scratching my head on this. I'm looking for options though. I am trying to encode my Jurassic Park BD down to a manageable size, although I don't want to do a 2-pass and restrict it that way. I'm worried that would destroy it more trying to achieve a target bitrate than just trying to scrub some of the grain out. That being said, I did a CRF 18 encode w/x264 and the file size came out at an unexpected mere 1GB reduction from the source VC-1 stream (!). It's eating up a LOT of bitrate. This is a very, very grainy film. Which I wasn't expecting because although I haven't watched it for a long time, I remember the image from VHS and DVD being a lot cleaner, while still sharp and with lots of detail. I am currenty doing another test with HQDN3D (all ripbot offers) but I don't get much grain reduction before I start seeing detail loss (tires, Grants pant wrinkles) and would like to experiment with other filters. Ideally a filter that focuses on the grain while removing a lot (I want -some- grain left) and not killing / oversmoothing the image as a whole. Something light on CPU (I already use brutal encoding settings) as well. I usually do not degrain films (Inception somewhat grainy but jesus, that came out at 7.5GB w/audio.). So I have little experience in this area. Any recommendations would be appreciated. (If folks want a couple clips to play around with, I will provide. Just ask.) Last edited by osgZach; 20th May 2013 at 16:58.