Adding grain for YouTube video

More info please... just so you know YouTube will re-encode everything you send it so it probably does look like mud as a result.. depending on the native resolution, bit rate, and other factors. Can you show us what you're talking about?

You're adding grain as in trying to emulate film grain?

Do you find that your videos start to get blocky after uploading to Youtube and is that what you are referring to as mud?

Depends on how much grain you actually add.

I often add grain, I think I set it to ~8 (OR it might be ~0.8, I don't have it in front of me right now) using the Premiere Pro noise & grain filter, only a very small amount, it's like adding salt to food; only add a pinch.

Something that happened to me, using CS6 I think, was that the video would just go crazy with artefacts everywhere when adding noise, I think it was only when adding it to After Effects comps within a Premiere Pro timeline that that was happening. Perhaps that is what happened to you?

I was using the CS6 trial at the time, I'm still on CS5.5, getting CC when I go back to College in September.