Lost grain?

What I'd do is make some tests with short clips, with varying amounts of grain added. Start small to bigger and bigger. Compress and take a look. No need to burn a coaster, just lok at the mpeg2 file.

Funny though, I never heard of video getting better when squashed down to dvd...

Not to solve the lost grain question, but more to the "I don't want it to look like video" point, I find two things useful.

- Address the Gamma. You need something like Nattress's Film look tools or use Color to stretch the color and luma distribution into a film S curve. Dealing with this goes a long way to changing the "video" look.

- The other thing that sets video apart from "film" is the frame rate. Video usually looks much smoother due to the higher 60 fields per second or 30 progressive frames per second recording rate. The 24p fps frame rate of film has an immediate visual impact. If you go that direction, use Compressor and set the retiming setting in Frame Tools to Better (not best) as a start. Best does yield slightly better images. However, they may not be noticably improved and they come at a really significant computational time increase.

Of course, well lit, well recorded material can be pushed and pulled much more effectively. It's really hard to do much with murky or over exposed material.

Have fun.

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