A whole new camera?

[Charles Angus]

That seems to be true for the FCP plug-in, but if it's the last thing you apply it shouldn't ad banding or degrade the image. You should do your CC first for precision anyway.

I would do grain/noise removal before CC, but grain addition after CC. That way, the optical flow in the noise reducer is dealing with untouched picture (which I believe it would prefer - easier to calculate vectors, and the noise/grain has not been magnified or altered to different degrees between clips), and the added grain is not being altered/magnified by the CC.

But feel free to call me crazy.

 

[Uli Plank]

I like Neatvideo the best from all noise reducers, but have some problems on the Mac.

I expected it to perform best on unaltered 4K in AE as well, but even the latest version of AE get's very unstable with Neatvideo, crashing after a few frames. I tried the "flush cache after every frame" trick to no avail.
Much more stable in 2K, but still not perfect in 16 bit, I need to render in smaller chunks.

Anybody experiencing similar problems?

 

[Evin Grant]

I would do grain/noise removal before CC, but grain addition after CC. That way, the optical flow in the noise reducer is dealing with untouched picture (which I believe it would prefer - easier to calculate vectors, and the noise/grain has not been magnified or altered to different degrees between clips), and the added grain is not being altered/magnified by the CC.

But feel free to call me crazy.

If you have the luxury of 10bit DPX capable CC workflow by all means NR filter first. But if you're leveraging the RAW capabilities in Color you're probably better doing it on output.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

whoa, just caught this thread. Wow! Thanks for this write-up Evin, downloading the clip now

 

[M. Bergeron]

The developer suggests to calibrate the camera with one of the charts used for NeatImage.

http://www.neatimage.com/testtarget.html

You can shoot an LCD directly for that purpose.

He explained to me in a email that when you select one patch, the software checks for other regions (different colors) automatically. Similar to Noise Ninja but transparent to the user. It is not just done from one gray patch hence the good idea to calibrate the camera with the chart at different ISO.

 

[Dave Blackham]

Are there any view to the Innobits purifier software for this sort of work.

It works very well on digital noise but I dont have any tests agaist Innobits or other offerings.

Dave

The Lowry process is basically the same concept as NeatVideo except running on a crazy supercomputer.

It looks from frame to frame and tries do intentify what is noise and what is picture information.

The Lowry process does a certain amount of super-resolution I think - eg it combines information from multiple frames to build a higher resolution image than any one frame.

Originally developed to help with film scans - now used heavily on digital.

I agree that NeatVideo is pretty neat though! So far if used properly it beats all the others I've tried. You can get more complex and set it up to work in multiple passes but then you're trading off even more CPU time.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Ivan Cortazar]

I like Neatvideo the best from all noise reducers, but have some problems on the Mac.

I expected it to perform best on unaltered 4K in AE as well, but even the latest version of AE get's very unstable with Neatvideo, crashing after a few frames. I tried the "flush cache after every frame" trick to no avail.
Much more stable in 2K, but still not perfect in 16 bit, I need to render in smaller chunks.

Anybody experiencing similar problems?

Same here. Can't render 4K. In that case I render a 2K of the comp and apply the Neat Image. I contact Neat Image staff and they said that they needed to get a copy of the footage i was working, but didn't have the time to go with the procees. I might do it next week.

I love Neat Image but for 4K footage it is unusable in AE.

 

[Curran Giddens]

Same here. Can't render 4K....
I love Neat Image but for 4K footage it is unusable in AE.

Are you trying it on the native R3D files? Have you or anyone tried it with 4K TIFF image sequences?

 

[Bruce Allen]

Are you trying it on the native R3D files? Have you or anyone tried it with 4K TIFF image sequences?

Yes, I have. Hit problems. But many things in After Effects have problems at 4K. CS5 will fix that.

Until then, work at 2K / 3K. 4K is unnecessary.

Are there any view to the Innobits purifier software for this sort of work.

It works very well on digital noise but I dont have any tests agaist Innobits or other offerings.

They all work - Sapphire, Tinderbox/Furnace, After Effects Grain Removal (based on Grain Surgery), etc - just Neat Image is the best I've found so far.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[patrickortman]

Holy Crap!

Holy Crap!

Background: I've been in post hell for weeks with a little promo that should have been posted in just a few days. The problem: hideous noise. Yes, it's not all the RED's fault- this was shot in a greenscreen stage where the stage manager was unable to light so that the camera got a proper exposure. I estimate we were a full stop under where we needed to be. And it was under tungsten lighting! Even the 80D filter wasn't helpful, given this situation.

The RED AR update was cool. But not enough, since we didn't shoot on build 20, and I can't afford to go back and redo it. But this, guys, this little $100 plugin from Neat Video may in fact save the shoot.

I downloaded the demo, it blew me away. I bought the pro plugin, it's looking stunning in After Effects.

It's rendering a TIF sequence now, so I can bring it into Shake. But by bringing in a few stills in Shake that have been processed from the AE version of NeatVideo: WOW.

My nodetree in Shake had a Keylight and Primatte, and a ton of roto.

With these new stills, it's one click in Primatte only. And I'm talking wispy hair keys, guys.

Thank God. This could be- if the motion tests I'm doing once this sequence fully renders hold up- the holy grail for cruddy footage. Yay!

 

[Paul Leeming]

The RED AR update was cool. But not enough, since we didn't shoot on build 20, and I can't afford to go back and redo it.

The beauty of the new colour science is that you actually CAN go back to earlier footage and reap the benefits of the new debayering etc.

But if you are really stuck for time then yes, you are best working with what you have rendered already.

NeatVideo sounds like it's well worth the $99 anyway! Will keep it in mind if I ever need to save a shoot....

Cheers all,

Paul

 

[paul gill]

i don't get something.

jim said that the noise improvements are not made in software so how can you apply these benefits on old footage if it is in camera?

 

[Kenneth Elkington]

i don't get something.

jim said that the noise improvements are not made in software so how can you apply these benefits on old footage if it is in camera?

You got it backwards, the improvements come from development of the debayering algorithms.

 

[Mark Phelan]

another example

another example

Here's a frame showing before and after the noise filter being applied. I don't have an issue with the noise in this particular shot, but wanted to see what would change if I wanted to apply the filter. Edit: They're showing transposed, so the filtered version is on the left.

 

[Michel Hafner]

Here's a frame showing before and after the noise filter being applied. I don't have an issue with the noise in this particular shot, but wanted to see what would change if I wanted to apply the filter. Edit: They're showing transposed, so the filtered version is on the left.

I would have to see it in motion but slight waxyness seems to enter the still.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

So will you get the best possible results with Neat Video by creating a profile with the charts? I suppose you still get better results by manually tweaking each shot, right?