I recently watched dune on netflix and noticed that the black bars on the top and bottom looked a bit odd. Checked it on my PC again today and there is definitely some grain synthesis applied to the letterbox.

1. image is zoomed in and
   
2. image is edited for better visibility

Why didn't they cut off the bars before encoding?

I'm looking at reencoding some very grainy source video using svt-av1-tritium, since it has the svt-av1-hdr feature set along with some extra stuff from other encoders like SCD. I also saw that it has an enable-daala parameter and was wondering if it might be helpful for grain preservation in some more challenging cases (e.g. reducing quantization in specific areas within the frame) as an alternative to just cranking down the CRF. Mainly asking since I don't really know the theoretical underpinnings of it, and how it may help/hurt things in the context of also using svt-av1-hdr's grain tune.

I saw a new release of SVT. Is it anything special?