High-frequency noise is generated that approximates the appearance of
traditional "film grain" for a digital video signal. By adding a
relatively small amount of film grain noise, the video can be made to
look more natural and more pleasing to the human viewer. The digital film
grain generation can be used to mask unnatural smooth artifacts in
digital video such as "blockiness" and "contouring" in the case of
compressed video and/or used to provide visual enhancements or special
effects to any digital video stream. The digital film grain generator can
control grain size and the amount of film grain to be added.