Investigating properties of film grain noise for film grain management

Part of our cultural heritage includes AV content stored on chemical film that is scanned, archived, processed electronically, and distributed for various purposes. Grain particles in the film lead to visible film grain noise in the viewed and/or scanned film. Film grain management is often required to enhance visual quality or enable better compression results. It includes the removal or reduction of film grain noise and/or the superimposition of a certain type of film grain noise. Achieving a natural film look and feel first requires sufficient understanding of major characteristics of film grain noise. This contribution presents results of extensive investigations of essential properties of film grain noise in various SD, 2k and 4k scanned films. These results will form the basis for subsequently developing adapted methods for film grain noise superimposition.