Denoising your Footage: Neat Video vs Denoiser II

[Music] welcome to film ride the show that takes mystery out of the effects techniques going to of your favorite Hollywood films your host Ryan Conley and working with dslrs or any lowbudget camera for that matter will often lead to some ugliness in your image some artifacts noise from higher isos and so on there's plenty that you can do while shooting to fight this but a lot of times you don't really have the luxury of that perfect shooting scenario which is where noise reduction plug-in comes into play there are a few including the amazing Dark Energy plugin which if you have the cash would be the way to go but it's double the price of the ones that we're going to be looking at today which the ones that we will test today are the two current most popular neat video and red giants denoiser ready [Music] go one of the biggest culprits of noise in your image is going to be that high ISO setting so the lower you can keep it the better you really want to hit that native ISO if your camera has one that you can find otherwise just keep it as low as you can now to show you what I'm talking about here's a shot with my lens cap on as I raise the iso you can see all that ugliness getting introduced into the image but when shooting to a compressed format like avcd for the c100 or h264 for most dslrs you are going to get compression and noise and other issues no matter what you do even when shooting at the lowest or native ISO you're still going to have some issues and of course that's why we introduce plugins to help get rid of these issues a few weeks ago I also showed how I always denoise my image and add more of a filmic grain back into the shots for a more cinematic look and feel when working with compressed footage I will always Den noise if I do have the time to whether I add grain back in or not so let's jump into these two then compare for starting with neat video now I did two shots first a 20,000 ISO to get some solid noise in there and then the second one was an extremely noisy 65,000 ISO which is completely unusable and will likely stay that way I'm assuming this shot is too far gone for these d noising softwares to do anything with after I drop my shot in I'm going to add neat video on there then click the menu icon to bring up neat video interface first thing I'm going to do in here is click the auto profile and it'll bring up this selection tool what you want to do here is Select an area that doesn't have detail just noise so an area like this would be perfect whereas if I put it here getting some detail from the image neat video will see that as noise and give you a crappy result so I'll select this area here and click Auto profile again which will give me a quality percentage over here which say anything over 60% is good 80% and above is very good so we're doing pretty solid right here now we click noise filter settings and it'll add some to noising over here we have our basic tools to adjust our noise reduction luminance will adjust the light value areas chrominance will deal with the color with chrominance I'll usually Jack it all the way up to 100% and leave it there but if you put luminance too high you start getting that overly smudgy look and just to show you what chrominance is doing I'll take it all the way down then back up and now if I toggle the whole thing off and then back on you see how much this is doing for our image right off the bat but and this is where neat video sort of wins you can get in and really dial in your settings a lot further by going to tools and switching to advanced mode in here you get a lot more options in noise level you can mess with the high mid and low which are the small medium and larger details the luminance and the red and blue channels best thing to do here is to Jack all these settings all the way up one by one to really see what they're doing for your image and then tweak to preference as we move down we have the same with noise uction amounts which I will handle the exact same way and then down here we have sharpening which I rarely use since I usually hate the look it gives for instance I'll turn it on and jack up the high it's just gross but if you mess with enough on the Right image you can get some good results but now that we are happy with our settings I'll hit apply and there we go before and after this is of course an extreme example so we aren't getting a great final image even still but you can see how much work this thing can do for you but now let's use Magic Bullet denoiser on the same shot we'll copy our clip over delete neat video from it and add to noiser and it immediately gives us a result which the noiser is much more drag and drop than neat video but still does a great job off the bat just like with neat video I want to get in and tweak my settings first we have the noise reduction slider which is defaulted at 100% you can take it higher but the more you push it the more you're going to get that blurred look so I'll put it at 150 for now next is motion estimate you'll check this if there's a lot of movement in your shot then separate fields for interlace shots then enhancement which is basically sharpening I'll usually leave this around the 20% default and then if we twirl down fine-tuning and advanc settings we go a little further to tweak this how we want it here you can go further into the luminance and Chromo like we did with NE video fine details will bring out the edges a bit helping to maintain some of the finer areas down in the advanced setting you can select whether you are working with film grain or video Noise We Are of course working with video then you can tweak the noise detection and the shadow and highlight offset all of these you should handle just like we did in neat video Jack them all the way up and back down see what they're doing to your image and go from there but now we have our before and after and here they are side by side neat video on top the noiser on the bottom before and the after both are super simple to use each have their pluses and minuses which we will get to in a minute but first sponsor if you dream of becoming a filmmaker full sale university has degree programs to help you achieve your goal including the oncampus film's bachelor degree program throughout the film's bachelor degree program you're going to learn the film making process from start to finish on a campus that houses the technology and resources you need in online digital cinematography bachelor program you learn what it takes to write shoot and edit your own films online students receive a technology package that includes a professional level digital video camera whale is also excited to announce the new Film Production master's degree program designed to give you an advanced education in the behind the-scenes aspects of film making wholesale grads have worked on Films including the Hunger Games gravity and many more and I went there I got a t-shirt and and knowledge a T-shirt and knowledge wholesale University also offers a variet of campus and online degrees and Fields related to the entertainment and media industry visit full.edu Film Riot to learn more logo so far we've only seen these shots in still frame in motion it's a totally different story so we're going to look at these two shots in motion but before we do let's once again take a look at the original an extremely noisy and unusable image so this isn't an image with a bit of noise in it that we're trying to clean up it's one that we're trying to save so first we have the neat video corrected version and then the red giant denoiser correct Ed version and for me I think red Giant's denoiser is winning hands down which surprises me since I've heard so much about NE video I thought that this would win in every way but here I'm liking the end result that I was able to get from denoiser much more than what I was getting with neat video but then let's take a look at the crazy 65,000 ISO video of horribleness first we throw on neat video which off the bat blew my mind here's the after with neat video on then before and again after it's just insane and as a still frame this is pretty amazing but then then we jump over to Red Giant and we look at the before and after denoiser and this is looking pretty good as well it's not quite as clean as neat video but it is still doing a pretty good job but then when we watch these back in motion they both aren't looking so hot anymore turns out there's not much saving this shot the neat video version has this Wess to the image as if there was some kind of heat displacement happening and the denoiser version has just this really distractive cloudy blocks over the whole image of course this is of no surprise the original image is just way too far gone to say but if I had no choice I had to use this image I think I would go with the neat video corrected version in this case but then if we move to a noisy but not impossible shot like this one they both do a really good job there really isn't too much of a difference between the two on a normal shot like this if I would give the advantage to one I would still probably go with magic bullet denoiser since it does have finer detail when I finish denoising whereas I find it get more of that cloudy chunky look from neat video for plus and minuses I'd say that neat video does seem a bit faster and I do like the extra controls and the ability to create a custom grain profile but I also found it to be a touch buggy at times the noiser is a bit slower and loses the battle when it comes to those super extreme shots but on average I like the look that I'm getting more from this than I do with neat video I also like that it comes with the color Suite from Red Giant so if you get that site you're just getting denoiser with it if you buy them by themselves both go for $99 on their own so no advantage on either side there and at the end I'm falling on the side of Giants denoiser but honestly I think both are very good so regardless of which you choose I think you're going to be happy I just prefer the Simplicity and that finer detail that I get from denoiser if you want to check out either of those plugins make sure you check out the note section below for links and all that good stuff I believe both of them have free trials logo so that's it for today you luscious lady dudes and manly girls who are often talking about the shirts we wear on our shows if you want to check out some awesome nerd shirts check out our affiliate link to jack of all trades in the notes below they're an awesome company that we've teamed up with lately all kinds of awesome shirts including some from Nightmare Before Christmas which is Perfect Since Halloween is coming up also the shirt I'm wearing right now so if you're into nerdy shirts definitely check that out and as always if you'd like to connect on the internets Twitter right here and I'll see you lovelies next week when we get convinced to take the hotel room but then we just argue the whole time

Channel: Film Riot

Views: 643,503

Keywords: Camera, digital filmmaking, film, film riot, film school, filmmaking, how-to, learn film, making movies, movies, Revision3, special effects, triune films, video cameras, writing

Id: u9-2eEwC6JE

Length: 9min 26sec (566 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 02 2014