Invaluable Tool - Neat Video

[Linda Nelson]

We had some poor results from a night shoot for our new feature film, DELIVERED, where we did not bring adequate lighting, so we've been experimenting with different approaches to correcting some of this footage, as it is critical to the storyline of the film and can no longer go back to this location. Below are three stills from our 1080p timeline in Adobe. The first is the raw image from the RED camera. The second is brightened by changing the exposure in the source settings using CS4 new feature for adjusting the raw footage. The third image is the result of tweaking that brightened image with a cool plug-in called Neat Video that lets you reduce the noise in your image.

 

[Kyle Presley]

Neat Video is the coolest thing. We got some really great results on our latest project Turncoat that we shot on the T1i, it made the video just look spectacular, albeit in 720p.

 

[alex lemon]

This looks great! Will have to try it out.

 

[Cam Crowley]

The Neat Video plug has saved my bacon on more than one occasion. Cheaper than a reshoot for sure!

 

[michaelmadison]

Yeah, it looks really great. We have a car scene that will really test it.

 

[Tim Morten]

Is the extra person in the third image an artifact from the software?

 

[michaelmadison]

The third image...the last image? I don't see a third person in the photo. Let me know if you see something.

 

[jimhare]

I just ordered it, looks like it does a great job.

Extra person - do you mean that thing that looks somewhere between a statue and a ghost standing on the table?

 

[michaelmadison]

That's an umbrella. Yeah it works really well. You can see the difference in the pool.

 

[Tim Morten]

Extra person - do you mean that thing that looks somewhere between a statue and a ghost standing on the table?

No, I meant the guy sitting on the chair... he only appears in the third image. Weak attempt at humor; forgive me!

 

[michaelmadison]

No problem.

 

[Linda Nelson]

That guy is actually in all three pictures. He's standing near the door in the first two. The image is so bad, you can barely see him. I guess I should use the same frame for all three pictures, but I didn't have time to remove the effects and re-render the video to get the original frames. If anyone thinks it would be helpful, I'll re-do the first two pictures.

 

[Lee Saxon]

Maybe it's because of the lower resolution images you're working with, but it seems to me that Neat Video is not as good at removing noise without removing image detail as Neat Image

 

[Chip G]

Neat Video plug in is awsome, best results are when you make 3 passes at a low setting instead of one pass at a high setting.

 

[Linda Nelson]

We're not working with low resolution images. We are accessing the 4K RED files in Adobe Premiere Pro. Then I use the Source Settings to brighten and then add the Neat Video Plug In as an effect, just one pass. If you right click on the pictures above, you'll see that they are taken off my 1080p timeline (originally as .tif, but this software would not let me display tif files, so I converted them to bmp). I agree that it is better to do more passes at a low setting, instead of one at a high setting. I haven't tried Neat Image yet, but will take a look. Also, I'm thinking I should make add the effect to a raw clip on a 4K timeline, then copy the rendered improved image to my 1080p timeline. The result might be even better - thanks for the tip.

 

[Chip G]

If you have the setting to high on one pass the images will look 'plastic'.

 

[Jay Rodriguez]

Neat video works miracles! I've been using it for a couple of months and love it...

 

[Linda Nelson]

We just tried it on some more footage that we thought would be totally unusable and it's fantastic. Again, it was another "poor night light" issue where there was a huge amount of noise in the image. By the way, someone above mentioned Neat Image - that's for photograhs or stills - Neat Video is for moving images.

 

[Kim Frank]

Neat Video plug in is awsome, best results are when you make 3 passes at a low setting instead of one pass at a high setting.

Excuse me, what do you mean by "make 3 passes" do you mean running the plugin several times on the same picture. Apply it in a low setting than render than apply again, render etc.? And if do you use the same noise profile everytime or do you calculate a new one after each rendering?

 

[Linda Nelson]

That's my understanding - better to do it several times at low settings, removing a little more each pass. I'm experimenting now and will let you know how it goes. It seems that you remove less detail by doing it this way.