Black noisey on import

[Walter Soyka]

[Andy Hawk] “I import a night time shot of a fireworks scene (.mts file) into AE CS4. In the preview pane it shows noise in the black sky area. But the mts file is very clear when viewed on the generic player software (ImageMixer 3 SE Player) that comes with my camera. At first I thought it was just a preview problem in AE, but the noise follows through into the export.”

I think that AE is showing you what is actually in the footage; your generic player software is crushing the blacks. That’s not normally desirable, but in this case, it does have the nice side effect of eliminating the noise in the shadows (at the expense of some detail in the shadows around the fireworks).

You can reduce the noise in AE with the Remove Grain effect [link], or you can crush the blacks like your player software does with an effect like Levels [link] or Curves [link].

One other note — CS4 doesn’t play well with temporally-compressed media commonly found in MTS files. I’ll quote forum leader Dave LaRonde:

Dave’s Stock Answer #1:

If the footage you imported into AE is any kind of the following — footage in an HDV acquisition codec, MPEG1, MPEG2, AVCHD, mp4, mts, m2t, H.261 or H.264 — you need to convert it to a different codec.

These kinds of footage use temporal, or interframe compression. They have keyframes at regular intervals, containing complete frame information. However, the frames in between do NOT have complete information. Interframe codecs toss out duplicated information.

In order to maintain peak rendering efficiency, AE needs complete information for each and every frame. But because these kinds of footage contain only partial information, AE freaks out, resulting in a wide variety of problems.

I’m a Mac guy, so I like to convert to Quicktime movies in the Animation or PNG codecs; both are lossless. I’ll use Apple’s Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder or Quicktime Pro to do it.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Andy Hawk]

Ahh so the player crushes the black you think? interesting. Ok I will play with the levels. Thanks Walter.

Though I am aware of temporally compressed media limitations and Guru Dave’s stock answer I have never had a problem with AE freakin when working with my .mts files. Although I usually only work with 15 sec clips. Anything longer than a few minutes I proxie. The reason I am aiming for a perfect black in my exported files is that they are going to my stock footage website.

So now my drama is whether to give my public the rawest possible data from AE without crushing the blacks, or the nicer image of a clean black background on all my night shots.

http://WWW.FootageNest.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Andy Hawk] “So now my drama is whether to give my public the rawest possible data from AE without crushing the blacks, or the nicer image of a clean black background on all my night shots.”

I appreciate that you’re considering it! I buy a lot of stock, then curse under my breath about clumsily-done post effects which I could have done better myself with the raw material.

If the only “signal” in the night sky is noise, then as a stock user, I don’t see any harm in removing it. If your noise removal starts affecting clouds or smoke from the fireworks, or even edge detail on the fireworks themselves, then my vote is to treat it lightly to preserve as much of that detail as you can.

Rather than levels, you might try Remove Grain or NeatVideo [link]. Remove Grain is built-in, and very good. NeatVideo is very powerful, and in my opinion is the best noise removal tool for the price, but you do have to read the manual.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events