V10: Noise Reduction best practices?

[Justin Quinn]

From what I understand, the NR feature is finally a good enough to do within Resolve 10. Up until now, NR not something I ever really do as I typically just pass it off to a Flame or AE artist.

So my question is, when doing Spatial NR, should one just put a window around whatever element of an image needs the NR and work in broad strokes; or is it better to use the key qualifier within the window to better isolate?

From what I've seen so far, I only really need to add 10-20 points on the NR Luma and Chroma Thresholds for most things, to keep it subtle and not look blurry... does this sound about right?

Also, is Spatial NR typically used alongside Temporal NR? Do they complement each other?

 

[ericyoung]

I haven't used the NR in Resolve, but as their names suggest Spatial and Temporal NR are likely working in two different domains. Spatial is presumably to do with picking the noisiest sections of a single frame and trying to do the best noise reduction on just those areas. Temporal is dealing with noise over time. With NR, it really a case of if it looks right it is right, but generally, it's better to leave a bit of noise to avoid the result looking overly smooth and lacking in detail.

 

[jake blackstone]

Spatial NR is NR, that presently used in Resolve v9. It's very much the type of NR you'd see in photoshop. It works in a similar manner to the Median NR. It is very limited in it's abilities and it does degrade the sharpness of the image in a significant way.
The temporal type of NR is designed to work with moving images, because it works with the information, that is gathered over the number of frames. Unlike spatial NR, temporal NR will not work on a single frame, but it will not degrade the sharpness of the images in the same matter, if used with video. I'm not surprised, that BM left both types of NR inside the Resolve, as BM has bad habit in leaving old or unfinished GUI elements in Resolve. I would suggest to ignore spatial NR and use only the temporal NR.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Agree with Jake. One of the reasons an Epic is such a great photography tool is that you can apply spatial noise reduction to effect not possible with a dedicated stills camera - it boosts performance way beyond out-of-the-box capabilities.