CompuServe Messages

Actually, there are two such routines. OLDMV simulates the "old movie" effect, complete with scratches, dust, fungus, color fade, and even optional sepia tone and jitter. More generally useful is a separate Pyros package (I forget the name of the actual routine, but it is an .IPX and the package name is Film Grain) that adds subtle film-style graininess that isn't intended to be noticeable as a special effect, but instead makes the whole animation look less "computery" and more "real" by simulating the kind of noise that film or a video camera would introduce. One advantage is that this adds the kind of chrominance noise that JPEG and similar compression algorithms (such as ImMIX's Wavelet) expect to see in live video, causing them to have something other than the actual details of your images to "lose" for their "lossiness." Your animations thus hold up better under high compression ratios.