Well, the problem is that the encoding process in AV1 does remove grain, only to add fake synthetic grain back in. My objection is not to the idea of encoding grain, it's with replacing it with fake synthetic grain.
It's kitschy, ersatz, whatever you want to call it. I used to spend a lot of time with artist filmmakers (many of whom are very nostalgic about celluloid) and there is no way in hell they would accept this solution. It wouldn't meet their standards of authenticity. It also "fakes" a medium-specific property in a way that is unprecedented in audio or visual coding. Their solution would be to either code at high enough bitrate to capture the grain, or insist on screening on physical celluloid.
That might sound extreme and unrealistic—it's what artist's film people are like—and even a bit snobby. After all, a lot of the options out there for adding film grain effects (or scratches etc.) to video are not intended for use by professional filmmakers, depending on how you define professional. There is definitely an element of snobbery to the statement that film grain should never be faked, whether by compositing something onto your home video or in a hidden way inside AV1.
I hope you can see that I respect the director's prerogative in choosing grain, I just don't think this AV1 grain synthesis methodology is sound from an aesthetic/authenticity point of view. It's digital faking of an chemical/analog effect, which IMO makes it unavoidably kitsch for reasons to do with old modernist ideas of "medium specificity".
I couldn't easily pull up any screenshots, but I've been a video encoder for some years and I can tell you that psy-rd (the x264 option to add film grain) does wonders in terms of grain fidelity.
The problem with matching the grain perfectly without the randomization is that it drives the bitrate crazy. A movie with 99% fidelity grain and 0 psy-rd will have a bitrate of 30mbps+.
If you use psy-rd though, you can get to 99% fidely grain at closer to 20mbps. The two screenshots will be visually indistinguishable, even when you are rapidly switching between the source and encode, even though you know that the grain is being randomly generated you can't tell.
If I get a chance later today I'll drop some comparison screenshots for a film encode that used a lot of psy-rd, I think the results will surprise you.
It's kitschy, ersatz, whatever you want to call it. I used to spend a lot of time with artist filmmakers (many of whom are very nostalgic about celluloid) and there is no way in hell they would accept this solution. It wouldn't meet their standards of authenticity. It also "fakes" a medium-specific property in a way that is unprecedented in audio or visual coding. Their solution would be to either code at high enough bitrate to capture the grain, or insist on screening on physical celluloid.
That might sound extreme and unrealistic—it's what artist's film people are like—and even a bit snobby. After all, a lot of the options out there for adding film grain effects (or scratches etc.) to video are not intended for use by professional filmmakers, depending on how you define professional. There is definitely an element of snobbery to the statement that film grain should never be faked, whether by compositing something onto your home video or in a hidden way inside AV1.
I hope you can see that I respect the director's prerogative in choosing grain, I just don't think this AV1 grain synthesis methodology is sound from an aesthetic/authenticity point of view. It's digital faking of an chemical/analog effect, which IMO makes it unavoidably kitsch for reasons to do with old modernist ideas of "medium specificity".