Cinegrain or RGrain or something else?

Cinegrain was brought up in this thread as to what helped create the "film look"-
fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/1127...hd-footage-and-fcp-x

Cinegrain looks great, but costs too much for me for personal and web use. I took a look at Rgrain.com, but to my eye didn't look as nice as the Cinegrain stuff. Anyone seen anything else at there you like for the "instant" 8, 16, and 35mm vintage film look?

Thanks,
Dave

I think the guys at Crumblepop have some amazing stuff. For $299 you get a real complete kit. Checkout their stuff.

There's also Gorilla Grain.

fcpguru wrote: I think the guys at Crumblepop have some amazing stuff. For $299 you get a real complete kit. Checkout their stuff.

Agreed. Grain35 is really nice.

fcpguru wrote: I think the guys at Crumblepop have some amazing stuff. For $299 you get a real complete kit. Checkout their stuff.

Cinegrain and Crumblepop both have $299 packages, but it's much more then I'm willing to spend for something to play with.

I must say that of the four I've seen now, Cinegrain still looks the best (they also have the best demo videos). But, I downloaded theirs and the Gorilla Grain demos so I can play with them and see if it's really something worth putting money into. I was hoping there would be a a small $39 package somewhere. For my limited use, I don't need light leaks or trailers, just a few good grain effects.

Thanks for the replies,
Dave

Genuine grains cost a lot to produce due to the cost of 35mm film development and capturing it.

There are ways to add artificial grain (not genuine grain captured from film) to your project. There is a free Film Grain filter in FCPX, which can help dither your image (used at a lower opacity though). Thera are also some film Grain presets in Motion that might be better.

There are some grain presets in various different plug-ins (mlooks has one, and Magic Bullet Looks has some good ones that I like too). While you have to pay for these plug ins you also get a heap of grading tools with them. Probably you could experiment with artificial film grain at low opacities to see if this works for you for basic internet work.

If is not good enough then you'll have to cough up the dough for the real grains.

Just my 2 cents as a personal opinion. I keep wondering why we witness all this technical progress in digital film making and then put filters on the material to make it look vintage.
I know: There are artistic purposes to do this. But I find it strange, nevertheless. It took quite some effort to arrive at 2K and 4K resolution, and I think this will go on until we have "retina" resolution for each frame. All this requires a lot of computer power and, of course, even more storage hardware for all those huge data files. By the way, it also requires considerable skills of make-up artists to prepare talents for HD shots, and to set up studios and locations appropriately. And then, after all that struggle, I should go and throw some vintage or film grain filters on that precious footage to make it look less HD? I don't think I'd do this - except, as I said, for artistic purposes or to make people think that the footage was shot a couple of years earlier

This is like the Vinyl Vs. CD argument.

I have the Grain 35 filters and I think they make my footage look better. It brings out the richness in the colors, the blue sky is a little more blue and the soft focus is more interesting.

Yes we want everything to be super high quality HD because that's the only way we can really get close to the quality of film. So we shoot on these HD cameras, but the final product is too crisp and I think it's very sterile looking. Having a grain just adds a little more depth and quality to the video, it makes it look more natural and by natural I just mean what we're used to when we think of films.

I only watch Bluray movies and the film grain doesn't make the quality of the video inferior to something shot on a digital camera. I'm very excited to see The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX, I think it's going to be the most amazing thing any of us have ever seen. Over an hour of IMAX footage projected onto an 80 foot screen, yeah there will be film grain, but it will be the highest resolution anyone has ever seen.

Julian, I actually like the Vinyl vs CD argument. I happen to have a considerable number of vinyls that I like very much. Some of them are more than 50 y old, and with the appropriate equipment and in the appropriate room the sound of the music is still wonderful. Over the years, though, they got some scratches here and there which makes it less enjoyable. And with CDs and CD players and sound file resolution we are still a bit away from natural (ear) resolution. Nevertheless, when you produce music tracks, I would only in exceptional cases consider to add vinyl scratches afterwards. But hey, this is not a principal discussion, just my opinion.
And while you ask: I think for internet distribution the film grain filters in FCPX and Motion work quite fine.

Gorilla Grain offer some free samples to play with:

gorillagrain.com/features

They also posted here some time back:

www.fcp.co/forum/9-free-fcpx-plugins-and...lm-grain-plugin#2464

Looks like they have some interesting products. Has anyone tried the cinelook plug-in? Looks pretty cool:

www.colorgradingcentral.com/products-cin...s-with-gorilla-grain

(BTW, I'm not affiliated with them, I was just looking through their website!)

Simon,

I downloaded the demos for both Gorilla Grain and CineGrain last week, but still haven't had a chance to play with them. Hopefully, today or tomorrow and I will post back here. I agree the CineLook package is interesting. The convenience of having it all in one place is nice without having to add numerous other effects and grading. For my needs, quick and convenient and inexpensive is a good thing.

Dave

I used Cinegrain for the latest short film I edited and color graded. We got there after trying almost every grain company. Their collection is huge and amazing, they have everything. It's pro, so it comes at a price. Nothing more to say.

Heard good things about Indiescans but it's $999 dollars per film stock pack....no way. Better go cinegrain.

I advice staying away from gorilla grain. It will make your image worse, as it's quality is terrible, probably generated from still images in AE. Personally, I wouldn't apply this thing in my video.

Till now i used Rgrain for my personal projects. Their complete pack is 100 bucks. It's computer generated and they admit it. You can achieve good results but they can also look cheesy, so don't overdo it.(this applies to all, but with rgrain you can feel it more because it's pure digital)

A week ago i stumbled upon Holygrain. It was 50 bucks, I couldn't resist and gave it a go to complete the journey. I'm happy i did. For that money, I grabbed a collection of 35,16,8mm grain and a big variety of dust and scratches plates. I don't really know if their grain is real or not mainly because of the price. But in my eyes it seems beautiful and certainly like the real thing, for the price you can't beat it.

Also, there are a lot free grain plates in the web. Some of them very good, but you have to dig.

Hi,
you might want to take a look at vegasaur.com/film-grain . These 35mm overlays are real and don't cost an arm and a leg