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Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan
Not really seeing any dastardly DNR in those screenshots of the original. Interestingly enough, I read a comment from someone involved in filmmaking on another forum and they were talking about how it's not reasonable for people (on this site specifically) to expect everything to have the grain of a Sony scan and that basically it's messing with peoples' perceptions of how film actually looks.
With Sony scans you're getting a 4K or higher scan of the original element (prints are multiple generations removed with much less resolved grain to the point that you may not even be aware of its presence), on some of these Sony scans it doesn't even look as if there's been any noise reduction whatsoever as it appears that scanner noise is still visible. On top of that, quite a few Sony 4K remasters have been artificially sharpened which accentuates the grain and noise even more. Add in Sony's tendency to really pump up the contrast/brightness for HDR and things can get really ugly depending on what equipment you have.
I've got to wonder if this mentality that Sony scans are how film should look (when you'd never see anything like that outside of digital) and that anything less means it isn't filmic, is causing perfectly filmic looking presentations to be unjustifiably shunned. I remember reading comments where people were talking about UHDs such as Unforgiven and the Nolan titles having moderate or distracting DNR. When I was watching them, the acronym DNR never even came to mind (outside of those several distracting moments from Batman Begins), I was just too busy enjoying the films and saw nothing that detracted from the experience.
Of course, I haven't yet seen these Jurassic Park UHDs in motion and it is Universal, so there's that too.
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These are excellent points, and only serve to hammer home the point that just because a release doesn't have Sony Grain (tm) doesn't mean it's been DNRed. I'd like to also add a couple more peculiar aspect about the Sony grain I'm seeing:
If you look at the transfers of Nolan's films shot in 35mm, you can see the grain is a bit squished vertically. This is because he shoots in anamorphic, and when the image is expanded out, the grain will stretch on the x axis. However, if you look at Ghost Busters for example (which, according to what I've read, was shot on anamorphic), you can't see the similar stretching and the grain looks circular as opposed to oval.
I've heard that, in some grading workflows, the goal is to remove the grain so you can color correct and reinsert afterwards to avoid the grain becoming agitated by the correction process. I wonder if this is an indication of what Sony is doing? Given that a heavier grain increases perceived sharpness, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony pumped up the grain so as to make their UHDs appear sharper.
As for grain in general, I feel like it's helpful to take a look at this still from the Dawn of the Dead IP, which, aside from having a simple balancing, is straight from the scanner with no "DNR":
Note that the grain isn't as contrasted as the Sony grain. It's very fine, and is very noticeable in the chroma as well as the luma (whereas Sony grain seems far more visible in the chroma). Obviously the rules by which the grain manifests are governed partly by the stock used...
It's important to remember that, when compressing a grained image, the HEVC encoder will smudge the grain a little bit and potentially lessen the chroma component since the chroma resolution is HD.
That's why I feel the Jurassic Park transfer is a good example of proper grain management on UHD:
-It's very fine
-It's very visible in the chroma component
-It doesn't look like noise
Obviously if the grain were finer or more resolute I'd prefer that, but there are compromises that have to be accepted with compressed video.