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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Image Stabilizer in FCPX

I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is/was an issue with Neat Video and FCP-X. Did you upgrade to 10.0.8? Or consider taking the noise reduction out to Motion.
 
No something is going on there. How fast does it render when you switch the Nose reduction filter off?

Dominik Muench said:
Bob: my footage is proresLT 1280x720 and the edit about 8 minutes long..... you reckon that would take a while ? I had it rendering for about two hours and nothing changed....it wouldn't take that long ?
Click to expand...
 
Nah, if he used NR on all of it but the render is only getting slammed @ one spot, and consistently in the same area, then there is likely something else in the sequence setting it off. OTOH, moving it out of FCP will only speed up the render.

If you have NR and stabilization on the same clip, be prepared to wait. Maybe you should try pre-rendering your stabilized clips.

Make sure background rendering is off, or better yet remove all of your other projects from FCP. It could be that about the time you get to 6% the BG rendering is kicking in.
 
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I removed all my transitions, now trying to render with noise reduction and stabilization active on each clip, if that fails I will switch neat video off to see if this could be the problem. thanks for the help guys.

yep I'm on 10.0.8 terry.
 
Hello Dominik
Do you have any title generators? Theres a known issue with a couple of complex title generators in 10.0.6/10.0.7 that freezes renders at the same spot all the time and eventually crashes FCPX. Exports stop at the same spot.


Rick
 
Does the image stab inherently make the image a touch softer?

Bob Gundu said:
Also, don't judge the footage until you render it out. A little sharpening helps too.
Click to expand...
 
Dominik Muench said:
Terry gets the price, with neat video deactivated the clips render fine, shame I just bought that plugin last week, i hope they get this fixed soon.
Click to expand...

There is nothing to fix. Neat Video uses motion analysis algorithms in order to determine what is a good pixel and what is a noise pixel. In essence it examines the trajectory of all pixels in the image and usually, it may even need to compare them all over a number of frames. All of this is one of the most computationally intensive algorithm, which can and does take a very long time. On top of that stabilization often uses the same motion analysis for creating smooth stabilized image. On many platforms, like Nucoda FilmMaster, motion analysis needs to be performed only once and then it can be re-used by the software to perform NR, stabilization, motion compensated ramps etc. It all sounds different, but all those transforms use the same motion analysis. Incidentally, that is why Resolve's NR is awful, because this analysis can't be easily done in real time. The problem in doing Neat Video NR and stabilization at the same time is that, as I already had explained, motion analysis must be performed at least twice- once by Neat Video and separately by FCPX and that will cause HUGE slow down. There is no fix for that, other than getting beefy GPU, as it is used by the software to speed up the analysis.
Said that, you may try to perform image stabilization first, render out and then apply NR to the rendered file. It should speed up things somewhat...
 
Will Keir said:
Does the image stab inherently make the image a touch softer?
Click to expand...


Not if it's done correctly. The image needs to be blown up and that is where the softness comes in, unless special methods used, like it is possible in Smoke. In that case there is no requirement for the blow up.
With something like Resolve you can dial down the amount of stabilization, where image slightly moves, but it is smother nevertheless. In that case you sometimes can get away with very minor amount of blow up, which makes picture sharper.
 
Jake - I will look into it further but I think that Neat Video actually does warn that there is a bug. So, yes, there will be a "fix" at some point.
 
Terry VerHaar said:
Jake - I will look into it further but I think that Neat Video actually does warn that there is a bug. So, yes, there will be a "fix" at some point.
Click to expand...

I understand, that there may be a bug. But bug or not, it still does take a considerable amount of time to do proper NR for the reasons I already explained.
 
Dom,

as others have stated Neat video is very time consuming to analyze and render. The rest of the steps I outlined earlier should be a good normal workflow. If the footage is all relatively the same and assuming you have motion, you could render out your whole file and then try to apply the neat video in motion (your fcp licsense works with motion as well) and it might be a slightly quicker render when you do it that way.

also try to select a shot in the timeline and render the neat video only on one shot. The render of a a five second shot will give you a good idea of how long 8 minutes will take.

I have to say in fcp x it's nice to import the r3d create the proxy files, edit in the proxy files with the low res preferences and then switch on the r3d for the final outputs.

Even creating 1280 media from the proxies would probably look really good.

david
 
Jake: I dont think the issue is performance, I think its an actual software bug where the neat video plugin stops the render altogether, I tested it on a very short clip (like david suggested) with nothing else on my timeline, something that should render in a couple of minutes (I used a trial of an older NV plugin and it worked fine) and it still idled at 16% for ages.
 
So you're transcoding your 4k/5k footage to 720p LT, THEN applying Neat Video and stabilization? Of course the footage is going to be soft... you're barely left with SD resolution once those two operations have finished! Even if it's 'just' for web, you really have to use higher resolution if you want reposition/DNR operations to look good.


Why not just replace those clips that need stabilization with the R3D versions in the timeline? At least the final 720p render will be razor sharp, and Neat Video will build a much better noise profile if it's sampling the raw file - assuming you get around the render bug. It'll be slow, but your gain in quality will be massive.
 
DL Fitch said:
So you're transcoding your 4k/5k footage to 720p LT, THEN applying Neat Video and stabilization? Of course the footage is going to be soft... you're barely left with SD resolution once those two operations have finished! Even if it's 'just' for web, you really have to use higher resolution if you want reposition/DNR operations to look good.


Why not just replace those clips that need stabilization with the R3D versions in the timeline? At least the final 720p render will be razor sharp, and Neat Video will build a much better noise profile if it's sampling the raw file - assuming you get around the render bug. It'll be slow, but your gain in quality will be massive.
Click to expand...


yeah thats pretty much been the workflow on this edit. might reconnect it with some 4k renders and see if i can get it any better.
 
Bug or no, what you were asking of your system was extremely demanding. I'm not surprised it got jammed up. I am glad you got through it though. It looks like fun.

I would not down-rez before applying stabilization, especially with big dynamic landscapes such as you have in here. Why would you down sample to 720 and then blow it up again? Take advantage of that resolution instead of throwing it out. That should solve the softness problem you were seeing. If someone already mentioned that, my apologies.
 
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