How often do you Neat Video

[Michael Jarvis]

Agree, But before getting to that point I would actually for a lot of stuff go 360 shutter and possibly even shoot lowframerate plates to comp into the shots. neat video and similar smearing tools is something I see as the very last resort.

Yes, these are good alternatives during the acquisition process.

 

[jake blackstone]

Fincher has used some level of noise reduction on every feature he's shot digitally; prior to Gone Girl it was the Lowry Process... not sure what it was on Gone Girl. It's pretty apparent in the texture of the image, particularly in dark scenes, that something has changed; he also stabilizes most locked off shots and you can see and feel that, too. It dehumanizes the camera.

Whether it's a choice or a compromise seems like semantics based on whom you ask.

There was a day when auto-tune was viewed the same way...

Fincher is not the first nor is he the last director to use NR. Noise reduction is a repair tool, plain and simple. In some rare instances Resolve's temporal NR is used as a skin smoothing tool. But that is only because it's not really a noise reduction tool, but a median filter.
Said that, I have no idea what is it, that you are arguing about.
The question is "How often do you use Neat video"? And my suggestion is- don't, if you can help it...

 

[Matt W.]

Fincher is not the first nor is he the last director to use NR. Noise reduction is a repair tool, plain and simple. In some rare instances Resolve's temporal NR is used as a skin smoothing tool. But that is only because it's not really a noise reduction tool, but a median filter.
Said that, I have no idea what is it, that you are arguing about.
The question is "How often do you use Neat video"? And my suggestion is- don't, if you can help it...

I'm arguing that you can use noise reduction as an aesthetic tool, just as you can use image stabilization as one.

That said, outside of using Neat Video to match or remove grain when compositing, I have only used it in salvage situations resulting from massive unintentional underexposure or to clean up skin, reduce flicker, etc.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Fincher has used some level of noise reduction on every feature he's shot digitally; prior to Gone Girl it was the Lowry Process... not sure what it was on Gone Girl. It's pretty apparent in the texture of the image, particularly in dark scenes, that something has changed; he also stabilizes most locked off shots and you can see and feel that, too. It dehumanizes the camera.

Whether it's a choice or a compromise seems like semantics based on whom you ask.

There was a day when auto-tune was viewed the same way...

Just wondering, how would you be able to see that a locked of shot is stabilised... I mean as it's locked of it's not moving and we are not talking film camera with gate weave here so... why would he do such thing? Hand held shots I do understand, tripod, dolly shots, and crane shots sure.... but lock off shots? they are fixed by definition, no?

Then for image processing I don't know fincher I have not work for him but all i know is that a lot of high end filmes goes trough quite amazing batch trees to get their "look" and texture ontop of the grading... I've seen some of them and what surprised me was how little they actually did to the image even though the nodes/filters where plenty. So yes very possible that finisher have a denoise, high frequency smoothing, skin nodes for each actor, lens fix setups for certain lenses etc, etc and most likely also a re-grain ontop of it all... But again I don't know how he works but thats some of the common stuff. Just altering the colours and be happy with it is usually not how it's done.

 

[Matt W.]

Just wondering, how would you be able to see that a locked of shot is stabilised... I mean as it's locked of it's not moving and we are not talking film camera with gate weave here so... why would he do such thing? Hand held shots I do understand, tripod, dolly shots, and crane shots sure.... but lock off shots? they are fixed by definition, no?

Then for image processing I don't know fincher I have not work for him but all i know is that a lot of high end filmes goes trough quite amazing batch trees to get their "look" and texture ontop of the grading... I've seen some of them and what surprised me was how little they actually did to the image even though the nodes/filters where plenty. So yes very possible that finisher have a denoise, high frequency smoothing, skin nodes for each actor, lens fix setups for certain lenses etc, etc and most likely also a re-grain ontop of it all... But again I don't know how he works but thats some of the common stuff. Just altering the colours and be happy with it is usually not how it's done.

I know, but thanks for the condescension.

Friends of friends work on his post team and they've told me that he stabilizes locked off shots to add an inhuman, superior quality to the camera, but it's not a secret, as he's hinted at as much in interviews before. You do comp (quite well, I might add!) so I'm sure you'd had telephoto locked off shots in which you've tracked something to match an element despite the shot being "locked off."

The entirety of Social Network was processed; I don't know about the others, but parts of them. If you look at images from the blu ray the smoothness to the tonality clearly hints at noise reduction. The texture is too perfect and clean in the shadows even for the most perfectly exposed shot.

 

[Craig Parkes]

I just used Neat Video noise reduction extensively on a low budget feature for finishing the 4K master.

Here's the thing - there was noise in the footage, we shot at the low end quite a bit, it had a moody look and at 2K DCP and HD it looked fantastic, the noise was not disturbing, it doesn't cause issues with compression at that resolution - all is great.

The DI was monitored at 2K but I got them to output a 4K master in case UHD sales come up.

So UHD sales came up - and the samples provided were rejected due to noise complaints.

Here's the thing, it was graded off a 2K Christie in a grading theatre - everyone did a great job for a 2k/HD target resolution, the DOP did a great job - we just hadn't really planned (nor had any facility at the time) to QC at 4K.

And here's the thing with 4K delivery - noise free 4K delivery is what networks at the moment absolutely want. They don't care about aesthetics, or design, or even QC standards as such (there is no agreed upon 4K qc standards or even deliverable right now).

What there is, is emerging 4K OTT VOD networks that are worried about bandwidth, or owned by TV manufacturers that want perfectly clean, sterile images, or both.

They don't want to know about noise, or grain, or texture.

They want pristine, perfectly noise free images - it helps compression, it help sells tvs and if you didn't plan around that going in then Neat Video is a savior.

(Or potentially any other Noise reduction, but we were very impressed with the results from Neat Video for the price)

Being low budget, we probably couldn't have avoided some use of Noise Reduction, but knowing what I do now if we had been targeting 4K as our primary master I would have made sure the DOP was a lot more cautious around how close we got to the noise floor.

From a personal aesthetic, I actually prefer the slightly noisy 2K master than the perfectly clean 4K master, but from a technical perspective I also appreciate how the slighlty noisy 4K master is unacceptable.

From a regular viewers perspective - at the end of the day, they won't know the difference, even if they have a 4K tv, as long as they are watching it from a regular viewing distance.

The aesthetic of grain/noise simply won't have any place in the future of distribution - sadly, because it can be quite appealing.

 

[Nook Kim]

FWIW, I use NR tools aesthetically where it fits (quite a lot btw on music videos), and I also use NR tools for the purpose of.. well reducing noise. I have my choice of NR tools customised to my liking including Neat Video. Although very subtle, each NR tool creates different feel (may I say texture) and when it's used accordingly, it can add unique characteristics to different projects. I'm surprised not so many people take advantage of the tools here. And as straight up NR tool for straight up NR, Neat Video truly is amazing and does wonders.

My last note to add.. noise (or grain) is a bitch on the web.

 

[Marc Wielage]

No, noise reduction is not an aesthetic choice. Most of the time it's a necessity. Lowry Process is a proprietary process and very few can afford it. I bet you, if Lowry Process was used ( I don't know if that is a fact), only select scenes used it and those scenes had noise reduction for a single practical reason- images were noisy.

In the case of Social Network, the entire movie was processed. However, different scenes had different settings -- essentially, they can do scene by scene NR, including only reducing grain from lowlights, or only from highlights, or only from still objects. It's a very flexible system. Most of what they do is grain management, trying to keep the noise at an even rate throughout the entire film. I don't know what philosophy they used on ​Gone Girl.

That said, outside of using Neat Video to match or remove grain when compositing, I have only used it in salvage situations resulting from massive unintentional underexposure or to clean up skin, reduce flicker, etc.

There are much better tools out there to reduce flicker. Boris FX Continuum now has an OFX plug-in for Resolve, and that would be my choice for flicker reduction or removal. Trying to do it with NR is very counter-productive; I know, because that's how we attempted to do it in the 1990s and early 2000s.

 

[Ben Scott]

I had some decent success using Neat Video to rescue a shoot where we didn't have a chance to black shade properly before we had to start and we had a fair bit of noise in the shadows even when everything was exposed properly.

 

[Alexander Mejia]

I generally use Neat Video to clean up every video before I put it on the web. Yes I know it changes the final look of the master, but on the other hand, the denoised footage looks better on youtube, than uploading the well lit shots onto YouTube and watch the compression destroy the image.

If Youtube was around 8-10Mbps for HD I would not do NR, but 4.5mbps is not enough.

 

[Saumene Mehrdady]

only use it for emergencies, and it does a great job.

 

[Zack Birlew]

I'm working on a project right now and, although not a RED shoot, I've had to use NR to fix some action camera shots for VFX. We used an SJ4000 action camera so everything was on auto pretty much and the shots were at night and underwater so, yeah, lots of noise! In those instances, you just need NR but even with some shots lit only by flashlight things look okay. I don't mind a little noise but for lower budget and run n' gun type situations it can be a problem, especially from shot to shot. I have Neat Video and Redgiant DeNoiser II and I've been getting better results with this SJ4000 footage using DeNoiser II. But with all NR, even built in NLE ones, it's really best not to go crazy with it unless you simply don't like image detail. Now this project is at 1080p, so in 4K it's even more important to take it easy with NR simply because you have much more detail to lose.