Eliminate Grain from footage.

Anyone have any suggestions for eliminating grain from footage now that RGS no longer sells Denoiser?
I'm editing on FCP7 and AECS5.

You really should know the whole story (you will find a happy ending at the end)...

QUOTED from the RGS "RED ROOM BLOG":

Our goal at Red Giant is to offer unique products that provide real value to our customers.

In March 2011, Google acquired a technology company called Green Parrot Pictures to improve the quality of videos uploaded to its YouTube service. (Read article) Green Parrot Pictures was our development partner on Magic Bullet Denoiser, and its video denoising technology is an integral part of the plug-in.

Because of the Google acquisition, Red Giant no longer has the legal right to sell Denoiser. Unfortunately, you will not be able to purchase or download Denoiser from us, as we have to remove all current and past versions from our website and product catalog. With the next update of Magic Bullet Suite in mid-December, Denoiser will no longer ship with the Suite.

The good news is that you can continue to use your copy of Denoiser. The Google acquisition does not change your rights to use a product that you already have. It only affects our legal right to sell or distribute it further.

Our Red Giant team is hard at work developing a new version of Denoiser. In early 2012, the new Denoiser II will be included in Magic Bullet Suite and sold individually. We are confident this version will deliver the same great results as the Denoiser that you currently use and love. In fact, we feel the new Denoiser will be more stable, as it addresses customer requests and quality issues. NOTE: Due to the restriction of the Green Parrot Pictures license, Denoiser II will not be backward compatible with earlier Denoiser projects.

Current owners of Denoiser 1.0/1.0.1 will get a free update to Denoiser II. New purchases of Magic Bullet Suite will also receive Denoiser II at no additional cost. For full details about the transition to Denoiser II, please read our Denoiser FAQ Page.

Product quality is very important to us, and we?re making sure the results are amazing. We feel that current and future customers will be happy with the new product once it?s available, but until then there will be a gap in service. We truly apologize for any inconvenience, and hope you share our excitement about the upcoming potential of the new Denoiser II.

The Happy Ending: Denoiser II is coming SOON (I am currently working on the BETA Test Team) and it will ROCK even HARDER that the original.

Hang in there.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

There is also neat video:

[www.neatvideo.com]

There is The Furnace from The Foundry:

[www.neatvideo.com]

And then there is the free denoiser in AE. Try them all and see which you like.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks...I'll give these a try.

This is terrific, Gerard-- except that second link to the Foundry isn't-- and Furnace isn't available for NLE's.

Neat Video seems to come closest to the features I have in the discontinued Topaz Labs' Enhance which was available for much the same range of NLE's. Both use detailed sharpening and denoising per frame-- but also apply a cool "look-ahead/behind" capability to compare noise in neighboring frames-- up to five frames ahead-behind. Despite the longer processing times required, this always delivers superior results than per-frame plugins.

The two have nearly identical features but the Neat Video plugin has streamlined the interface very nicely-- I can actually understand what the sliders do-- and added the ability to process interlaced video; Enhance always required deinterlacing.

So while I wonder if this is why Topaz Labs has discontinued their $350.00 retail offering-- they may well be licensing some of its tech to Neat or simply can't compete with it-- Neat itself is far neater in layout and looks more capable in operation.

Either way, this product has my wallet's attention. The two-part tutorial is excellent and looks quite friendly inside Premiere Pro. This sort of capability is part of expensive online suite hardware like Terenex and Miranda boxes. Whoo-hoo!

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Invoke the big TimeCode Viewer with Control -T !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

I have a solution that's out of left field, and that is take my noisy footage, export to image sequences in Quicktime and use Topaz DeNoise for Photoshop using Batch Processing Action in PS. Then join them all back up in Quicktime and re-import into FCP. It works BRILLIANTLY. Best noise reduction out there, and for $80 I get a plugin for PS that's useful for video too.

i'm another user of Neat Video. it's worked well for me.

Marcus what image format do you export to? Tiff, PSD?


nick

<"join them all back up in Quicktime and re-import into FCP... Best noise reduction out there">

Wow! who'da thunk... Then "Adobe's Lightroom 4 Beta" should work even better. I'm playing with that now. It has a very very improved noise reduction feature.

Marcus, your method can only treat intraframe noise. Video involves interframe noise as well. Noise which may be imperceptible (and unremovable except by considerable softening) in single frames can be annoying as hell when it changes randomly from frame to frame. Thus video noise reduction software has more to do than still picture noise reduction software has.

The softwares listed probably all include the temporal component. Video Purifier is primarily for the temporal component. I can't recommend Video Purifier (because it is only 8-bit, and it can mess up colors, and its product support is nil) but it is interesting to try since it can remove the sizzle from video without imparting the glazed look of purely intraframe noise reduction. Read this earlier strand on noise reduction software.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Nick, I use .tiff

Dcouzin, I don't sweat the technical details, I just see great results.

Okay, Magic Bullet Denoiser II is out:

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/blog/2012/02/28/magic-bullet-denoiser-ii-is-here/

It's only for Adobe After Effects for now. They plan to support Final Cut 7, Final Cut X and Premiere Pro by mid-2012.