Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

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Videoneth

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Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostSat May 21, 2022 3:00 pm

Does anyone knows if it's possible (and how) to extract grain/noise (mostly noise because the source is digital) so it can be applied again?

I generally add grain back, but it's not "noise" and not the same as the element replaced on the footage.

I know that denoising the whole frame then adding grain back on it is a way to do it but there is a method (with Fusion maybe) to isolat these "artifacts"?

If use the "frequency separation" very often in photoshop, but don't know where to look for the same type of thing in Resolve (mostly with fusion).

If there is a way in the color page, don't hesitate share
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Igor Riđanović

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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostSat May 21, 2022 8:39 pm

Look for Simon Ubsdell frequency separation for Fusion tutorial on YouTube.
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Videoneth

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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostSat May 21, 2022 9:57 pm

Thanks
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Marc Wielage

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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostSun May 22, 2022 12:47 am

Maxwellx wrote:Does anyone knows if it's possible (and how) to extract grain/noise (mostly noise because the source is digital) so it can be applied again?

We did that routinely at Lowry Digital (and was part of their award-winning "Lowry Process" for film restoration), but I think it's not practical for most people.

It sounds like what you're trying to do is grain management: keep a constant and consistent amount of grain/noise in the image throughout the program. That just requires a lot of attention and skill. You could just noise reduce the whole show, and then apply some very mild grain, like some 200T 35mm film grain. Adjust it to taste.

Don't get so hung on the type and size and variety of grain. It's all very subjective, and bear in mind a lot of viewers will never notice the grain, given the amount of compression on streaming services and websites out there.

In addition to ResolveFX Grain, here's a list of grain sources out there:

http://cinegrain.com/
http://www.crumplepop.com/
http://filmlooks.com/
http://www.filmwash.com/shop/
https://www.fxphd.com/store/stock/scrat ... ge-bundle/
http://gorillagrain.com/
https://colourlab.ai/grainlab/
https://www.holygrain.com/
http://indieessentials.com
https://www.invizipro.com/invizigrain
https://lensdistortions.com/
http://www.rgrain.com/
https://www.rocketstock.com/video-packs ... -overlays/
https://www.smashworkshop.com/film-overlays
https://vamify.com/collections/vintage-8mm-overlays
http://vegasaur.com/film-grain

(Note that RGrain used to be synthetic, but I believe they have real grain now as well.)

Filmbox, Dehancer, and Film Convert Nitrate have methods for synthsizing grains and other looks:

https://videovillage.co/filmbox/
https://www.dehancer.com/
http://www.filmconvert.com/

LiveGrain is a specialized process that is priced per project (and fairly costly):

http://www.live-grain.com

Each of them has pros and cons, but I generally find I return to Cinegrain most of the time. Crumblepop, FilmLooks, and Indie Essentials have some good damaged film bits, as does Warren Eagles with his ScratchFX bundle on FXPHD. It's hard to beat ResolveFX Grain purely for speed (plus it's free).
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Videoneth

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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostSun May 22, 2022 11:49 am

Marc Wielage wrote:Don't get so hung on the type and size and variety of grain. It's all very subjective, and bear in mind a lot of viewers will never notice the grain, given the amount of compression on streaming services and websites out there.


Yeah I'm ending with that most of the time, grain :lol: That's one of my problems, sometimes I want the things that won't be seeing by 99.9% of the people to be perfect, because I know and can see where things are different, or missing.

Most of the time, I denoise the whole image and add grain back in... or I just add grain where I replace elements of the image with something that is too smooth. I prefer to touch the original source the less possible.

But I'm always interested in the advanced techniques, especially for VFX stuff. Most of the time, I prefer to work with bad footage (compression, or noise, etc), because of the challenge... to be able to make as if it was filmed this way.

Replacing a logo? I want the same digital noise as the one before :D. Of course, I don't got too far and know when to really stop pixel peeping.

I'm gonna try the Simon Ubsdell method.
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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostMon May 23, 2022 1:42 pm

If you denoise and do a difference with the original image, you should get the noise

If you add that image to the clean one you should get somewhat the original.

I will try if I have a moment.
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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostMon May 23, 2022 2:53 pm

This is an interesting question :ugeek:
(and this is how to achieve the Walter's suggestion which I agree with)

So, if you're ok to make it in Fusion, you could try this way. It doesn't require anything else than Fu and your eyes...
Prior to anything, spot the gain and gamma button below the viewer, click it and up the gain a bit to make any change obvious...

1/ add a blur node after your image (let's call this latter "mainpic"), and add just enough blur to treat the noise of an image.This kind of cheap & basic denoise process actually shows you the amount of blur you need to kind of denoise mainpic
You may want to try the same later on after separation of luma and chroma if you like, but I don't think it's necessary to master the global process

2/ add a grain node after the blur one and also activate the dual view in this viewer : put the original mainpic on the left and the grain node view on the right. Now when you move the separation bar, you can see more left or more right image in the viewer.

3/ reduce the grain node power almost all the way left, probably until 0,0x and play with the grain size and grain softness in order to have this view look the same as the other one (original mainpic).

4/ Finally play with the red, blue and green "difference" sliders to fine tune.

Now moving the dual view bar in the viewer from left to right and backwards shouldn't show you any difference on the image : you can wipe the blur node and keep the Grain node : it's the grain of mainpic which is ready to be applied on another pic ;)
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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostMon May 23, 2022 3:00 pm

Proper regraining needs scaling grain with channel magnitude, good regraining tools (best I know is DasGrain for Nuke) profile the grain per channel and then scale the grain element according to the plate that is to be regrained. DasGrain derives the grain from original and denoised plate and is meant to apply regrain in a way that areas where there was no changes done get exactly the same original grain back. This is hard to do with masking due to how mixing grain works (blending grain makes it weaker so soft transitions are somewhat of a pita in grain matching).

Simpler methods like subtracting degrained plate from original and then plussing it back over comp don’t take changed luminance into account but can also work ok depending on what exactly is done.

Although in BMD forum it would be preferable to refer to Fusion, I’d suggest searching Nuke tutorials and methods for anything comp related, there is just orders of magnitude more info available. Applying same techniques is relatively straightforward in Fu.
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Videoneth

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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostMon May 23, 2022 4:16 pm

Igor Riđanović wrote:Look for Simon Ubsdell frequency separation for Fusion tutorial on YouTube.

I finally had time to watched it again... yeah.. no a bit too complicated for me lol
He's a master with Fusion, but this is too high level for me
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Re: Technique to "extract" grain/noise?

PostMon May 23, 2022 4:19 pm

Thanks for all the suggestions
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