AV1@Scale: Film Grain Synthesis, The Awakening

> Picture this: you’re watching a classic film, and the subtle dance of film grain adds a layer of authenticity and nostalgia to every scene

It just adds visual noise that obscures details of the authentic scene, and nothing prevents nostalgia from being tied to many of the more prominent visual cues like old actors or your own old memories from when you watched it first...

> contributing to [film's] realism

But there is no grain in reality, so it does the opposite

Otherwise I'm glad AV1 marches along and instead of wasting bitrate encoding visual garbage has an algorithmic replacement mechanism- which also means you could turn it off easier.

Documentaries might care about accurately representing reality. For every other cinematic genre, "authenticity" is not an inherent goal. If film grain is part of the director's vision, then that's just as valid as a choice to have dramatic non-diagetic music playing in the background of a scene (which is highly inauthentic, but also highly effective at evoking emotion, which is the point of art).