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Broadcast standards regarding video noise
Dear ruminants
We recently filmed some B-roll (on Panasonic TM700 and X920) some of which is unusually noisy, particularly clear blue skies. I’m familiar with the NeatVideo plugin, but even that isn’t fixing the issue. In any case it looks worse.
Reading up on broadcast requirements, I can’t seem to find anything definitive regarding standards for video noise. We’d like to use some of these shots in a piece (eventually aimed for broadcast), but we’re struggling to include them in the final edit, mainly because they look wrong.
What I want to know is whether we can use them, if we have no alternative shots.
Basically:
– Is there a standard or acceptable amount of noise in a shot?
– Is there the equivalent of a “scope” to measure noise? (be it in FCP or anywhere else)
– Does the choice of codec affect noise levels and/or the ability to remove this? (We mainly use AIC or ProRes)Would appreciate any advice…
Zak
MacPro 2 x QuadCore Intel Xeon – FCP 6.0.6 – NeatVideo v3
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4 Replies
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Noise is in the eye of the beholder. What one network will accept, another will not. I haven’t seen specs that mention level of noise that is acceptable, because there’s no way to really “quantify” that.
If it’s that noisy, can you re-shoot? It’s just b-roll.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Over here in Europe video noise is also defined subjectively, specs are that it shouldn’t be excessive but excessive is not rigorously defined. We do have specs for acceptable technical standards for cameras though, all the broadcasters over here demand that you comply with this – https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r118.pdf
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Noise could be art. So it is subjective. Are you seeing grainy noise or 8bit color banding in the sky gradient? Post a frame. I have seen Neat do a good job on sky noise before. You could always layer your shot and blur just the noise region and chroma key out the bad area with the new blurred area.
Dan Powers
P3 Media
Austin, TX -
Thanks for your comments.
It has helped to consider some different approaches. We finally decided to drop the worst of the shots, as it’s not worth the risk (or the time).
All the best,
Zak
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