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Hi everyone,
I'm working on a short film currently, and I'm trying to add a really cool grain effect, where I automate the effect so that color grain is either added in from 0-100% or removed from 100-0% over the title and credits. When I make this effect in the Premiere Pro, the preview looks just fine, with high quality captions over a high quality screen of grain. Yet, once I export, both the captions and grain become heavily pixelated.
Here are shots of the Title Screen and Credits in the Premiere Pro preview:
And here are shots of the same screens once they are exported:
I've tried exporting with a variety of settings, including smaller bitrates and larger bitrates, but here's the most recent attempt:
Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way to get this effect without it lowering the quality once exported? Any and all help is appreciated. Thank you.
Pretty much any compressed codec is going to struggle with keeping this looking good. Codecs like H.264 break a video image down into macroblocks and average out the contents of that macroblock to reduce the data rate. That's why you can see 'squares' in the compressed noise in your exported video.
In your case - using animated noise - EVERY pixel over the entire image changes from one frame to another.
Full frame noise is a compression algorithms worst nightmare.
Effectively if any compression
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Turn off hardware endoding and try again.
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Thank you for the quick response and suggestion, but unfortunately it's still really poor quality once it's exported.
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How high have you pushed the bitrate? You might need significantly more than 10 to get that looking decent.
Neil
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I pushed the bitrate incrementally. Starting from "Match Source - Medium Bitrate" and then manually raising both the target bitrate and max bitrate as high as they can go, but the issue still persists.
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Have you tried exporting to a Final file in a full intraframe codec like ProRes, with Premiere's export option to re-import checked. Then from that file, make your H.264 deliverable?
Neil
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Pretty much any compressed codec is going to struggle with keeping this looking good. Codecs like H.264 break a video image down into macroblocks and average out the contents of that macroblock to reduce the data rate. That's why you can see 'squares' in the compressed noise in your exported video.
In your case - using animated noise - EVERY pixel over the entire image changes from one frame to another.
Full frame noise is a compression algorithms worst nightmare.
Effectively if any compression is applied to your video you will start to see the problem you are experiencing. The more compression the worse it looks.
Even with a high data rate (I tested 50Mbps) using H.264 the results are still not great. H.265 encoding looked slightly better (at lower data rates).
My Prores (standard) test look OK. Using Prores HQ even better. And Prores 444 should be almost indistinguishable from the original, though I did not test this.
However, even if you manage to get a good quality export using a better codec (Prores, DnX etc) if you plan to upload to Youtube/Vimeo or send through any additional compression - the result will be back to looking like crap.
Sorry to not bring better news 🙂
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That's okay, thanks for your response! I sort-of assumed something like this would be the case, just needed to confirm to make sure I wasn't doing something stupid. I'll test it with those other formats and see the results. Do you know if there is a similar effect I could use that isn't so heavy, or a way that I could alter the effect? If not, it's alright, I'll probably just end up scrapping the noise.
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Never tried this but - see if you can make the noise pixels bigger. I'm guessing they are currently pixel sized. See if you have the option to increase the noise size to say 4 pixels (or bigger?). Going from 1 to 4 pixels might significantly reduce data load. Also see if taking out the colour in the noise has any benefit to the compressed result.
You could also reduce the effective frame rate of the 'noise' so it's only changes every 2nd frame?
No idea if any of this will help or if it just ends up ruining the look you are after. Though if you do find a solution that improves what you are trying to achieve, would love to hear about it.
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Might spoil the effect but you could try adding some blur to it.
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Here's what's worked for me - it's a long workaround but if you want grain and small file sizes it works.
First off though you're going to start with a massive file size - export your vid as a Quicktime Apple Prores 422 HQ (or really any Prores but I usually shoot in 422 HQ so that works for me)
Download Handbrake https://handbrake.fr/
Import your giant Prores file into Handbrake
Go to the Video tab
Change encoder to H265
Then under Encoder Options change the Tune dropdown to "Grain" > Leave profile as Main > and Level to 4.0 (this usually works well for me)
Hit start and leave for a bit cause depending on the length of your project this could take a while - H265 is really slow but gives you a high pixel content for a low file size.
Once you're happy with your export you can delete the prores one unless you want a super HQ version for your records.
Hope this helps you out a year later
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Best is to set framerate to constant.
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I can't imagine that anyone solving this problem by avoiding compression. So this is not solved.
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Did you actually read the thread? Your comment doesn't sound like you did. There's a couple approaches listed to get around (mostly) the compression-caused problem offered in this thread.
Because the compression process, in this case, is the problem. The particular mode that H.264 compresses will turn fine even grain like that in the OP screen to macroblocking by design. It's the nature of how H.264 compression works.
Colorist Walter Volpatto, in one of his multi-hour FMC training presentations, talked about 'grain' added to mimic film grain. As compression ... any type of compression ... can have a major effect on 'grain'. He used several different grain methods, including expensive plugins for Resolve. Adding film-stock overlay patterns. Or simply adding an amount of 'grain' effect in Resolve.
And then created standard deliverable files for the streaming, network, or projection that are typical for the high-end movies he works on.
Then hosted viewing sessions with other 'major Hollywood' video post people, directors, DPs.
In the final result, whether projected in a theater with a full theater projection setup, or delivered via streaming or b-cast type service, viewed on a LARGE TV, you couldn't actually see a difference. Because the compression and devlivery/viewing processes pretty much obliterated the 'fine details' of the grain, no matter what grain process he used.
What you could see in his reference monitor prior to export, what you could see on the 'delivered' screen, weren't the same. He couldn't get the fancy grain patterns through the delivery system.
So now, all one of the most major colorists doing high-end expensive work, known for his "filmic" movies does ... is add a bit of the standard 'grain' effect from Resolve. Nothing more than that realistically makes it into the final product.
I think Walter's capabilities are a bit above mine.
Neil
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Oh i see, you think that i underestimate the problem. Or a whole industry.
Nope, i read all the comments because i made a fancy effect w/grain that i wished to keep in a music video. As you see, there isn't a discussion about what couses the problem, how compression works or who did succesfully solved it before, or how deep is the question for that matter. It's about solving it.
I see that you are a skilled editor, if only you take the time to share what you learned from this colorist in detail, or give a link to his lecture, or at least identify the terms needed, instead of praising his skills or giving a private lecture about compression; which is already given perfectly above.
I'm sure that some of the people who discuss about framerates, bitrates, different formats above also works for global brands, as i do. And i don't even consider myself as an editor. So it's not about your "skilled people club". It's about getting the job done, to find how.
He used several different grain methods, including expensive plugins for Resolve. Adding film-stock overlay patterns. Or simply adding an amount of 'grain' effect in Resolve.
By @R Neil Haugen
This is the only part people can benefit, because it may lead more questions to reach an answer, and young people in this industry are usually fast learners. And i think this is why this community exists; for that little quote in your unnecessarily long comment.
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To restate.
Walter tried all the 'major' effects at making "film grain" to see if any of them actually got through compression and delivery to the screen by movie projection, streaming or network delivery.
NOTHING made it though any more notably than simply adding a bit of "grain" to the image.
Not one of the 'fancy' effects so many colorists use, including what he'd done on several major motion pictures, looks any different after compression/delivery/display than simple added grain.
Because compresson kills most grain. Period.
Neil
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Thanks for your time.
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It's a frustrating thing for sure. Very frustrating.
But when even Volpatto can't get around it ... well, one simply surrenders to practicality.
Neil
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Use these settings in Handbrake
Convert to h265 from a Prores 422 export with your grain - I've been really impressed at how well it handles grain with file sizes that are 1/10th of the size of prores
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I changed the grain effect with something slightly less cool and handed the project because of the deadline. Thanks anyway, I'll try that next time if needed. But now probably i'll run away from grain because these are very absurd and inefficient workflows. Adobe should remove that effect from effects panel or must warn people when exporting compressed formats, just like that "offline media" reminder on export window 🙂
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The same can be done by avoiding the steps of exporting in Prores and re-encoding in Handbrake, using the Voukoder plugin which gives many encoding options, including tune:grain in h.265.