Noise Reduction on HiDef images

I made a great purchase this week - Neat Image noise reduction software. It's intended for use with digital still cameras and scanners but I thought I'd give it a go with moving pictures :)

Now, the noise I'm reducing is not digital artifacts and aliasing: it's sometimes grain from using high gain on night shots, sometimes when I've scaled up a shot (and hence magnified the grain) and sometimes I've sharpened specific areas of the shot where I felt text could be a little clearer. I say "sometimes" because it really is on a case-by-case basis. I've done all of the above many times on this production and only had to resort to Neat Image on less than 1% of the cases.

To use Neat Image, I first output a clip from After Effects as a sequence of TIF images. Then, in Neat Image (NI) I load in a test frame - usually one I know it'll find a good noise profile from - and practice getting a good output image using various noise filter settings. I've found the noise filter presets often to be the best solution or at least a really good starting point. Once I'm satisfied, I save the noise profile and filter setting. Now the batch processing can begin: point NI at a source directory (the TIF sequence I output from AE), tell it the noise profile and filter to use, direct it to output to a target directory and then press "Queue" (which is the "do it" button).

On my 4-processor Alienware beast (boasting again) NI is pretty fast. It'll eat through 500 images faster than I can make a cup of Orange and Lotus Flower tea, never mind drink it.

Finally, holding the shift key while dragging the directory folder to AE will effectively import the sequence as a clip. Now in AE I can chose to either replace the original "noisey" clip or overlay it - adding it to the composition and tweaking back the opacity.

Nice. :) 

Comments

[Tyler]

Couldn't you just use Neat Video (or does it not support HD)?

[Robert]

You need to buy the $99 "pro" version of NeatVideo for HD - but it looks from the website as though it'll work. Maybe I should have tried the demo version...