Best Way to Dealing with Heavy Grain x264 8 Bit 1970's Blu-ray

[StormMeows]

Hey guys,

I'm currently working on the 1976 film, King Kong. It is a very long movie and has a ton of grain in it. I have tried the tune-grain setting, but I don't typically like that effect. I usually disable mbtree and have deblocking set to -3:-3. What are some good values for aqstrength and qcomp that would be useful when dealing with a heavy grainy 1970's movie? I have typically found slightly higher qcomps and lower aqstrength to work (over my normal live action settings).

Also, do you guys typically encode heavy grainy movies with 2 pass versus CRF? I typically use CRF for everything, but the typical values I use (CRF 16-19) do not work well with this film. The bitrate ends up being not too far off from the source. Would there be any disadvantages of just using like a CRF 21 over 2 Pass?

Any help appreciated. Would love to know how you guys handle really grainy movies like this one. I have a lot in my collection that I need to encode. I realize I probably won't be able to save as much space versus a regular live action, but still want to save some space compared to the original blu-ray movie file. Thanks

[benwaggoner]

Grain takes a lot more bits to encode well, and professional Blu-ray encoders general are more tuned for grain preservation than x264 is. It wouldn't be surprising to not be able to reencode that kind of content at a substantially lower bitrate.

[StormMeows]

Grain takes a lot more bits to encode well, and professional Blu-ray encoders general are more tuned for grain preservation than x264 is. It wouldn't be surprising to not be able to reencode that kind of content at a substantially lower bitrate.

Thank you. So if it is super grainy and a CRF of say 20 is not going to save space, I should probably just keep these type of movies in their original form (remux with mkvtoolnix?)

[benwaggoner]

Thank you. So if it is super grainy and a CRF of say 20 is not going to save space, I should probably just keep these type of movies in their original form (remux with mkvtoolnix?
Exactly

[StormMeows]

Exactly

Thank you sir!! This is a great method that puts my mind at ease. :)

[kolak]

De-noise or use high enough bitrate to preserve it properly. There is no better way :)

[Boulder]

De-noise or use high enough bitrate to preserve it properly. There is no better way :)

Downscaling also often works incredibly well. 1080p -> 720p is what I do, there's very little detail lost but the required bitrate is much lower.