Wondering about grain...

[Vinyard]

Hello!

So I rented the movie "Hero" a few weeks ago. I sat down to watch the movie and I noticed A LOT of film grain. I mean... I know if a movie is shot on film (which like 99% of movies are shot in) there will be grain, some more than others. I've seen Scarface on blu-ray and the picture is sharp and nice and the colors are great! Even though Scarface had quite a lot of grain it wasn't ANYWHERE NEAR the movie Hero. First I thought there was something wrong with the disc and I tried adjusting the settings on my TV and blu-ray player. I mean... Hero was SUCH a grainy film! It was like my TV screen was full of ants, seriously. The picture wasn't even sharp!

So I turned off the movie after a few minutes because it was unwatchable and decided to look at the blu-ray review here on blu-ray.com. So I take a look at the screenshots in the review and to my amazement, I can't see any grain at all in those pictures. So I chose one picture and clicked on it to get fullscreen and then I paused the blu-ray movie on the exact same spot as the screenshot on my computer. So I compare the picture quality and the screenshot on blu-ray.com is nice and clear and the screen on my TV is grainy all over! How is it possible that the movie Hero can look so great on the screenshots?
I can't even describe how grainy Hero was. It's like nothing you've seen. It literally looked like my TV screen had a thin layer of sand covering the entire screen. I'm not joking, it seriously looked like that. The grain in Scarface was not a problem for me because I enjoyed the overall picture and sound quality but Hero had grain covering the entire screen during the entire movie and when I look at the pictures on this website I can barely see any grain at all.

How is this possible? Did the person who uploaded those screenshots and wrote the review have any special settings on the TV/BR-player? I was also watching American History X on blu-ray and that movie also had a lot of grain but mostly in the background and on walls etc etc. But I compared American History X on my TV screen with the screens on the review here. And I notice that there's a lot of grain in the background on my TV and when I look at the pictures in the review the wall is completely fine without grain.
Seriously folks, help me out! I'm going crazy over this. Maybe these people who write the reviews have a $10.000 blu-ray player or something, lol :P

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by Vinyard

Hello!

So I rented the movie "Hero" a few weeks ago. I sat down to watch the movie and I noticed A LOT of film grain. I mean... I know if a movie is shot on film (which like 99% of movies are shot in) there will be grain, some more than others. I've seen Scarface on blu-ray and the picture is sharp and nice and the colors are great! Even though Scarface had quite a lot of grain it wasn't ANYWHERE NEAR the movie Hero. First I thought there was something wrong with the disc and I tried adjusting the settings on my TV and blu-ray player. I mean... Hero was SUCH a grainy film! It was like my TV screen was full of ants, seriously. The picture wasn't even sharp!

So I turned off the movie after a few minutes because it was unwatchable and decided to look at the blu-ray review here on blu-ray.com. So I take a look at the screenshots in the review and to my amazement, I can't see any grain at all in those pictures. So I chose one picture and clicked on it to get fullscreen and then I paused the blu-ray movie on the exact same spot as the screenshot on my computer. So I compare the picture quality and the screenshot on blu-ray.com is nice and clear and the screen on my TV is grainy all over! How is it possible that the movie Hero can look so great on the screenshots?
I can't even describe how grainy Hero was. It's like nothing you've seen. It literally looked like my TV screen had a thin layer of sand covering the entire screen. I'm not joking, it seriously looked like that. The grain in Scarface was not a problem for me because I enjoyed the overall picture and sound quality but Hero had grain covering the entire screen during the entire movie and when I look at the pictures on this website I can barely see any grain at all.

How is this possible? Did the person who uploaded those screenshots and wrote the review have any special settings on the TV/BR-player? I was also watching American History X on blu-ray and that movie also had a lot of grain but mostly in the background and on walls etc etc. But I compared American History X on my TV screen with the screens on the review here. And I notice that there's a lot of grain in the background on my TV and when I look at the pictures in the review the wall is completely fine without grain.
Seriously folks, help me out! I'm going crazy over this. Maybe these people who write the reviews have a $10.000 blu-ray player or something, lol :P

have you tried turning down the sharpness and calibrating your display??? sounds like your tv is either uncalibrated or you have a bad HDMI cable causing "snow" effects

[Vinyard]

Originally Posted by wormraper

have you tried turning down the sharpness and calibrating your display??? sounds like your tv is either uncalibrated or you have a bad HDMI cable causing "snow" effects

I believe the settings are fine, movies like XMen First Class, Insidious, The Others and Seven Pounds looked great so I don't believe it's the settings.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by Vinyard

I believe the settings are fine, movies like XMen First Class, Insidious, The Others and Seven Pounds looked great so I don't believe it's the settings.

maybe maybe not, your settings basically may be EXAGGERATING the natural grain that's shown in the films (ala Hero and American History X) while the grain is less evident in the others like Insidious and First class due to less grain in the original stock. run a calibration disc like the AVSHD disc over at the AVS forums (free download) and check again.

[rdodolak]

The screenshots on this site aren't dependent on the type of player used by the reviewer. The images are captured through other means. Couple of things regarding the screenshots, make sure the images are displaying as 1080p and not 720p (the option can be changed under preferences) and grain may be less noticable in images when viewed on a smaller computer monitor when compared to a larger television screen.

I'd also check all components in the chain to include the settings for the blu-ray player and the receiver (if you're using one).

If you can post the make/model of your equipment and the settings you're using we may be able to see some obvious problems with the settings.

[Deciazulado]

When you check other screncaptures on our reviews with those other BDs you have, do the images on your TV look like the captures? The captures are made with no edge enhancements, so what you see there is what the BD image looks like in still mode with no sharpness added.

If viewing at the same relative viewing angle in 1080p and the TV on 1:1 mode, with your sharpness setting set to make X-Men look like this,

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...937&position=5

then Hero should similarly look like this

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...=31&position=2

If you can upload jpgs/usb sticks onto being displayed on your HDTV you could load the pics and switch them back and forth with the BDin still mode too)







______________________________________________
When it's late at night before the full moon blooms, in the middle of the forest, it's very grainy

Attack of the Rods

[sherwindu]

I have seen some very informative posts here, especially the ones that say movie film is capable of high resolution transfer.

I have been taking my home movie 8 and super 8 film to a small company that is reasonably priced and does their own work. The first DVD they made for me was in Standard Definition and it looked very nice on my 1080 flat screen TV. I then asked for a transfer to Blu-Ray from some similar movie film. I noticed a kind of shimmering effect on the resultant Blu-Ray disc and
the clarity was not a huge improvement over the previous Standard Def. disc. I was given one copy as BDMV/AVCHD (playable format) and another
as BDAV/MPEGTS. Both copies had this shimmering effect. Also lost in this transfer were details, like a fast running river. I did a side by side comparison by projecting the film next to the TV. Also, the colors were unusual. The greens were much more vivid on the Blu-Ray although the whites were a little grayed out. Some of this could be just the differences between a projected image and a TV.

I would like to go ahead with the Blu-Ray transfers done on the service TELECINE machine frame by frame, but I don't know if I can blame the service for some of these anomalies, or is it just the nature of the transfer process. There must be some compression in the playable Blu-Ray, but it looks about the same as the Data version. The playable disc is more compact and possibly easier to edit, but am I losing some quality? I would ask the service to check their equipment, but they are kind of sensitive about what equipment they use and how they do their transfers.

Any advice would be appreciated.