It’s easy to say “grain as late as possible”, but it’s more informative to list the ways that you can do it wrong. Here is a quick list of things not to do to grain:
Never grain before a blur.
Never grain before a grade.
Never scale the grain.
Never animate the grain separately from the clip.
Never grain before a tracker.
These rules can all be broken if you have a really, really good reason, but they hold true 99% of the time.
I would guess that the first time most people drop a frame range node they are expecting to be able to set a range, and then have that effect the images piped through it. I know I certainly did. It doesn’t work anything like that.
The real use for this node is to set a frame range for the downstream nodes. For example: if you were trying to track an animated object that didn’t have any read nodes in it, then your tracker would spit out an error that said something to the effect of “can’t track, no frame range.” That means it doesn’t know if it is before the start, or after the end so it’s not going to track at all. The fix is simple: put in a frame range node and set it to your frame range.
This is a simple hitch, but for a long time I thought I was the only person that this didn’t work for. Using a grade node to match colors from a source plate ought to be a straightforward thing, but it isn’t. Set the black level on the new plate, set the lift on the source. Control click after picking the eyedropper in the black areas of each. Repeat for the whites, and that ought to do it.
But it doesn’t.
The hitch is that the grade node needs to be disabled when you do this. Otherwise the first color you pick will start grading and mess up the second color that you pick. It’s as simple as that. hit g to bring it in. Hit d to disable it, and then go about your business.
If that all wasn’t clear, then watch Frank Rueter do it on the link below, and remember to disable/enable it.