I tried a demo of DigiEffects Cinelook plugin for AfterEffects and Premier, and so far it's the closest thing to film I've ever seen from a video camera and is real easy to use. Only downside is the rendering time (.5 frames per second on my 2 GHz PC).

Anyone else have good experiences with this package?

I have used Cinelook extensively in the past and in the beginning I was just as impressedas you are now I think. I feel the presets are all a bit drastic, and would benefit from reducing the amount and size of grain.

What's left in the end is a really nice (but expensive) curves filter, and the last years I've been using just the curves and levels filters in AE to the same effect. I don't add much grain (how much grain shows in a 35mm to video transfer anyway...), and if I do, I often get by using AE's noise with a slight blur. I apply a large amount of noise to a solid, and then apply a slight blur to the noise layer. Then experiment with transfer modes for this layer, and reduce the transparency to a minimum. If you need a larger grain size (for 16 or 8 mm effect), scale up the noise layer.

Looks just as good as Cinelook and renders a LOT faster. Just make sure you are working with full frames, not fields, so you might need to separate fields, or de-interlace.

Bar3nd

That's real interesting, I'll have to try that. Thanks for the advice.

I do notice the presets are drastic and so I will have to experiment a lot.