film grain on Shameless DVDs
 

Hello~. I signed up a minute ago. :)
I watched two Shameless DVDs; Femina Ridens and Venus in Fur.
I was surprise to see very clean picture with lesser amount of noise than recent movies.
But I'm concerned about loss of detail in the process of grain removal.
You could lower the threshold of grain removal and keep more picture detail(grain).
Thanks.

I'm no tech wizard but isn't the lack of grain down to the fact that it's not a high-definition picture? I'd say it's more the fact that the grain isn't as prominent due to the limitations of standard definition. Compare the New York Ripper dvd with the bluray - the former looks great but with less grain due to it being SD, the latter looks a lot better with more grain and detail due to it beind HD.

There's loads of films I've seen on dvd which don't have prominent grain which is only noticed when watching the bluray. I'd wager the Shameless releases are the same.

I examined some scenes frame by frame on PC. and I saw signs of noise reduction. Example 1, in one frame you can see some grains though it seems to be digitally processed. Next few frames have lesser grains and the detail is softened. This doesn't look natural. Example 2, even in the dark scenes, you hardly see grains.
When the picture looks this clean, I can't help but question the level of noise reduction was too high.
I want to post some captures if it doesn't infringe copyright.

PaulD is spot on with his comment. Both are standard def releases, hence less grain than would be apparent on a high def release.

Believe what you like.

Do you normally sit back and relax and watch a film frame-by-frame on your PC though?

I'm not having a go, but you do see my point yeah?

I've seen many dvds and blurays but this is unusual.

I'm questioning this because the picture is softened by removing fillm grain. I can give you the example if you want. And I know what you mean but I don't agree with you. And quality matters to me. I don't want dull detail for the sake of clean picture.

As Shameless is a small company with a limited budget and any form of DNR or digital manipulation costs money, I'd be very surprised if they didn't release films in the form they were received, so any DNR or grain reduction will have been present on the master with which Shameless were supplied. (Incidentally, the same applies to Arrow Video.)

Indeed, Nos. Although Shameless have released some reconstructed films such as Femina Ridens, these have been reconstructed with as much care as possible by the likes of Marc Morris and most of the re-constructed elements are usually of lower quality than the main film - thus no DNR or grain reduction in those elements at all.

Mpeg-2 doesn't handle film grain at all well. It never has and never will so a certain element of noise reduction is necessary to get a reasonable encode in SD, especially at the low bit rates that have to be used.