Blu-ray "Grain-Rape" or: How I Learned To Start Worrying and Hate DNR

And now a looooong post to hopefully make up for a month of radio silence...

I've been incommunicado for the past few weeks working on a video project that at one point required me to clean up an actor's blemishes using Apple's dandy compositing tool, Shake. My first attempt was passable; actually, the stills from each frame looked fine. However, when played as a sequence, the filter that was so good at removing the blemishes was also effectively erasing all the high-frequency information above the threshold setting. Now in English: the filter was making all the fine details in the video disappear.

Around the same time of my experiments, dialogue had been brewing in the home theater forums about the use of DNR (digital noise reduction) on HD masters that were making their way onto Blu-ray, and how EV-IL DNR was. It seems that there are in fact consumers out there in Home Video Land that think film grain is BAD and UGLY and should not be seen, so studios are using DNR to scrub out the offending grain in hi-def masters. The result: Blu-ray releases that should be sharp as a tack - with requisite grain - are instead revealing images that are grain-free with decreased resolution. At best, the results of DNR can provide a soft, air-brushed look to the image, that can sometimes pass for DVD (lower) quality. At worst, actors can look like Madame Tussaude's wax figure creations.

Robert Harris is a film historian and preservationist who specializes in restoring the large-format widescreen films of the 1950s. He has restored and reconstructed a number of classic films including Lawrence of Arabia (in 1989), Spartacus (1991), My Fair Lady (1994), and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1996) and Rear Window (1998). Thank you, Wikipedia. What Wiki doesn't say, is how passionate and connected he is with the online community via a variety of home theater forums and websites like Home Theater Forum and The Digital Bits. He's always willing to educate and engage in dialogue - even if you are a "newbie."

Here are some of his thoughts re: DNR, as it relates to the most recently affected release on Blu-ray (as of this writing), Patton:

Harris' original review.
All about film and grain.
The amount of high frequency detail lost.
The future of large format releases.

As usual, I learned quite a few things from Mr. Harris, but I couldn't reconcile how he recommended the disc in his original review, and then spent the next few posts essentially bashing it. Well, I just got around to watching Patton on Blu-ray, and here are the thoughts I posted in Mr. Harris' thread:

"I do not like the "grain-raping" as Mr. Harris might say. It is indeed visible, but nothing like the smeary grain gang-rape of the Eyes Wide Shut Blu-ray, which I find unwatchable, or other oft-mentioned DNR victims (Tremors, et al).

That being said, the Patton Blu-ray still makes my 2001 THX DVD look like a bad VHS dub.

Where General Patton once walked into frame as a smudge of a figure in the opening wide shot in the 2001 DVD, you can now see eyes, nose, and mouth. Even the medals are defined in the wide shot. I was not expecting such a significant increase in detail. I can't speak about the 2006 DVD, but the screen caps and the word is that the 2001 trumps it in detail. And IMHO the Blu-ray smokes the 2001 DVD. And then bitch slaps it. I'm very happy to have the Blu-ray.

I can only imagine what has been scrubbed out. I wish it was still there. There was no need to "grain-rape." That sounds like and should be a crime.

I will add my voice to the chorus denouncing the use of DNR in the manner it was used here, but now I understand the paradox Mr. Harris has revealed in his thread: how the Patton Blu-ray can be both flawed and highly/hearty recommended at the same time."

So, now I pose the question to you, fellow readers: do you like seeing grain, or do you want it gone along with all the fine details...? Feel free to post your thoughts. It's not a trick question and I won't flame you, I promise ;)