cleaning up video noise/grain?

[David Johnson]

I never recall the proper name (Remove Grain or Remove Noise), but the built-in AE plugin does a very good job. I’ve actually found it to work better than the third-party plugin grain removers … most tend to just blur images out to get rid of the grain. The downside is it’s very render-intensive so plan your render for overnight and use the most powerful machine you have access to.

Because it sounds like a possibility in your description, I’ll also mention that, since it’s intended for true film grain, it works well on grain or noise … not so well on compression artifacts and the like.

[Scott Novasic]

re-visions smooth kit has a set of tools that handle noise nicely.

SuperNova
Animation & Visual Effects
Scott Novasic
Los Angeles Ca
web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects

[Scott Roberts]

You can also try Neat Image for Final Cut Pro 7/ Motion 4: https://www.neatvideo.com/

https://www.myr3d.com

[David Johnson]

Neat Video does work better than other third-party plugins I’ve used and there is an AE version as well. It’s been too long since I’ve used SmoothKit to compare, but ReVisions plugins are very good in general.

[Steve Roberts]

Remove Grain works by analyzing the noise on a frame of your choosing, then effectively applying an opposite algorithm to your footage. It’s very effective, and was optimized for both film grain and video noise.

(You should enable temporal filtering for best results. Hey Todd K, could you ask the tech boys to enable it by default?)

Yes, if you’re talking about compression artifacts, such as MPEG-2, there should be no guarantees, since the amount of artifacts is likely to vary widely from frame to frame. No, Remove Grain is best when dealing with noise acquired during initial image acquisition. In my opinion.

(As I’ve written before, I used to give demos for the developers.)

[Charles Ferran]

hey, thanks guys, I ended up using the built in grain removal plugin and it worked wonders, I was amazed, its not perfect as you say, some areas just seemed a little blurred out, but thats ok, I can live with that, couldn’t live with what it was before.

Charles Ferran
845-699-5270
http://www.charlesferran.com

“Far better is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to rank with the poor spirits who neither enjoy much, nor suffer much because they live in a gray twilight that knows no victory or defeat.”

[Sean Kapleton]

Any chance one of you guys can explain how to go about using this built in Grain remover? I have never used it and it seems like there are a lot of parameters to mess with – or at least point me to something that explains this effect.

thank you
sean