Red Giant Denoiser, Neat video or....?

Björn Benckert · Aug 17, 2015

I never really use degrain tools except for when matching grain in composites and such but now I had a client that went out and underexposed to a level I never seen before, it´s so dark so I can not even understand how they could see what they where actually shooting...

I went with the Red Giant plugin in aftereffects and it works quite well. Or, I could get most of the noise away and not to many artefacts but ofcourse the result gets rather low in detail...

Anyone that compared the two, neat video and Red Giant or have another tool that is even better. The best I seen was the Cineon degrain, but the license I had for that was lost on a hard drive that died like 15 years ago.

Anyway, Here is a link to one of the low exposure r3d´s / clips if anyone has the time to run some tests. I was thinking it would be interesting to see what people here can squeeze out of it. It´s not graded so feel free to adjust curves or what ever to make it look good and to be able to compare different tests lets aim for HD output.

http://we.tl/oPOcdm2RRB

David Battistella · Aug 17, 2015

I'll give it a go with neat video bjorn.

David

Jason Kraynek · Aug 17, 2015

I've had both versions of RG and they have both constantly crashed and corrupted my projects (the only way i would recommend using them is to denoise per clip and export that clip- never keep the clip w effect on your timeline as i've been in situations where the project wont even open). I've never used it in AE though, just FCP and PP.
After getting the RED i tried RG and it crashed again so i bought Neat and even though i've only used it for 2 projects so far: thats the one i would recommend (if for no other reason- it didnt crash my system)
hope that helps

Bill Sepaniak · Aug 17, 2015

Björn Benckert said:
... Anyone .... have another tool that is even better. ...

Clarity in Nucoda ... But not cheap. Cinnafilm's Dark Energy plug-in is worth a look.

Nick Morrison · Aug 17, 2015

Bill Sepaniak said:
Clarity in Nucoda ... But not cheap. Cinnafilm's Dark Energy plug-in is worth a look.

Jake Blackstone swears by Nucoda, and says it's the best he's seen...

Zeb B · Aug 17, 2015

Nick Morrison said:
Jake Blackstone swears by Nucoda, and says it's the best he's seen...

Yeah but, Jake swears a lot ;-)

Gunleik Groven · Aug 17, 2015

Zeb B said:
Yeah but, Jake swears a lot ;-)

I could've deleted that comment.
But I really just want Jakes knowledge to be a good thing here.
Even for him...

Dunno if we've lost Mike Most to funny comments.... Hope not.

Believe me if we have, it wouldn't be good riddance... it would be a great loss.

Do not think that all the guys going against the grain here are lacking knowledge.
Quite a few (though seemingly annoying) do have some real knowledge and experience to bring to the table.

As to colors, Jake and Michael are not on the bottom of my list.

And:

Nope, I do not think it is a problem that they often outspokenly disagree.
Actually I think that is a lot of the force of both.

Björn Benckert · Aug 17, 2015

Nick Morrison said:
Jake Blackstone swears by Nucoda, and says it's the best he's seen...

Possible, but that´s a bit out of reach for me. But would love to see a Nucoda render of the clip.

Jason Kraynek said:
I've had both versions of RG and they have both constantly crashed and corrupted my projects (the only way i would recommend using them is to denoise per clip and export that clip- never keep the clip w effect on your timeline as i've been in situations where the project wont even open). I've never used it in AE though, just FCP and PP.
After getting the RED i tried RG and it crashed again so i bought Neat and even though i've only used it for 2 projects so far: thats the one i would recommend (if for no other reason- it didnt crash my system)
hope that helps

Aha,
I only used it in AE and there it went though a 5000 frame composition without a problem. Then it is possible to get differnet results when setting differnet reference frames so I ended up spliting it up in segments with differnet ref frame settings. but had no problem with crashes. I used Red Giant denoiser III with the latest AE version.

Björn Benckert · Aug 17, 2015

David Battistella said:
I'll give it a go with neat video bjorn.

David

Cool, I just realized I uploaded quite a long clip... Sorry about that. But possibly you can just render a bit of it. Would love to see.

Then let me know what RCXP setup you used and I try the same with RGIII and we can compare.

Brad Hawkins · Aug 17, 2015

Another vote for Clarity or Cinnafilm's Dark Energy AE plugin.

Dark Energy is the best solution I've tested in the sub $500 market. Not only does it do a great job of denoising while retaining fine detail, but it also includes a best in class grain tool. I've found it works well to clean the unwanted R3D noise and then re-grain with a finer, more subtle "texture" so that the image retains some life and doesn't get that plasticy look that can happen.

David Battistella · Aug 17, 2015

Bjorn,

ill get get you a couple of tiffs tomorrow. First look, I'm thinking maybe set the NR in RLF and then grade the clip from there to max out the sharpness, otherwise it can go a bit mushy. Depends which part of the clip and different parts need slightly different NR.

Zeb B · Aug 17, 2015

Gunleik Groven said:
I could've deleted that comment.
But I really just want Jakes knowledge to be a good thing here.
Even for him...

Dunno if we've lost Mike Most to funny comments.... Hope not.

Believe me if we have, it wouldn't be good riddance... it would be a great loss.

Do not think that all the guys going against the grain here are lacking knowledge.
Quite a few (though seemingly annoying) do have some real knowledge and experience to bring to the table.

As to colors, Jake and Michael are not on the bottom of my list.

And:

Nope, I do not think it is a problem that they often outspokenly disagree.
Actually I think that is a lot of the force of both.

I joke of course. Jake is the man. Used him for a couple commercial projects with great results. Love his edge and how he keeps it real with the lack of filtered posts. Refreshingly direct and not a pinky out while sipping designer tea discussing art kinda guy by any stretch.

Christoffer Glans · Aug 17, 2015

Björn Benckert said:
I never really use degrain tools except for when matching grain in composites and such but now I had a client that went out and underexposed to a level I never seen before, it´s so dark so I can not even understand how they could see what they where actually shooting...

I went with the Red Giant plugin in aftereffects and it works quite well. Or, I could get most of the noise away and not to many artefacts but ofcourse the result gets rather low in detail...

Anyone that compared the two, neat video and Red Giant or have another tool that is even better. The best I seen was the Cineon degrain, but the license I had for that was lost on a hard drive that died like 15 years ago.

Anyway, Here is a link to one of the low exposure r3d´s / clips if anyone has the time to run some tests. I was thinking it would be interesting to see what people here can squeeze out of it. It´s not graded so feel free to adjust curves or what ever to make it look good and to be able to compare different tests lets aim for HD output.

http://we.tl/oPOcdm2RRB

I use Neat Video and it works perfectly. I manage to get super clean images out of the worst possible ones. There might be some artefacts, but no where near what a noisy image is.

Actually I've encountered exactly this on a job where I did the editing. They shot on Dragon and the cinematographer was very experienced, but when I got the material it was dark... I mean black. I couldn't even see what or where they were. So I looked at the original files and the assistant editor didn't have time to check the settings, so it was exported "as is", which meant as it was shot on set. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. If they had shot it like that on set, they wouldn't have seen anything on the monitors, but they continued shooting.
We had to cram up the ISO to around 6400 in order to even see what was going on. Neat Video saved that production and it looked clean on TV. But I said to the production that, even though I don't usually trash talk, that cinematographer was as incompetent as a high level professional can be.

Björn Benckert · Aug 17, 2015

hmm, found this, http://nofilmschool.com/2014/10/neat-video-vs-denoiser-ii-which-plug-better-noise-reduction

Zeb B · Aug 18, 2015

With Neat sometimes its challenging to find the "no detail" control area for the algo to baseline off of. Any tips on this?

Jacobo Martinez · Aug 18, 2015

Bjorn, I would advise you to try the new Neat Video version 4!! its the best of all of the other 3 versions, it has more control and even an adaptive mode which scans 2 frames before and after, kind of like ADD.

Bill Sepaniak · Aug 18, 2015

I have seen Clarity work. It is amazing ... you typically apply it as an input FX in Nucoda and it just, more or less, automatically works on its own ... little or no fiddling around with it ... almost too easy. I have Dark Energy. It's an AE plugin. I have obtained good results with it ... but it takes a bit of playing around with. Every once in a while Cinnafilm will run a special on it. If memory serves me, I think I paid $150.00 for a direct download.

Matt Ryan · Aug 18, 2015

Brad Hawkins said:
Another vote for Clarity or Cinnafilm's Dark Energy AE plugin.

Dark Energy is the best solution I've tested in the sub $500 market. Not only does it do a great job of denoising while retaining fine detail, but it also includes a best in class grain tool. I've found it works well to clean the unwanted R3D noise and then re-grain with a finer, more subtle "texture" so that the image retains some life and doesn't get that plasticy look that can happen.

Is Dark Energy available for mac yet?