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Exporting Feature Shot on RED Helium + RG Denoiser: will it be ready by 2030?
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Nothing wrong in trying to establish a look. It’s just that Premiere is a terrible place to try to do the finishing work on something like a feature film.
But if you plan to be the one driving Resolve, be sure to give yourself plenty of time to get into the weeds. There are a few gotchas. I believe you will need to get the paid Resolve Studio version ($300) for the noise reduction.
The free version does nearly everything most casual users need, but it is limited on some of the effects. Its renders are also limited to UHD as the maximum export size. Whereas, with Studio, if you have 6K source clips, the single-clip exports can be at that same source resolution, even though the timeline may be 4K or 1080.
The built-in noise reduction is good for some types of sensor noise and is often all you’ll need. However, Neat is still better. Or just put a blanket of film grain on top and call it a day 🙂
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The magic answer is: Get an insanely specced out workstation computer.
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This is incredibly helpful information, Oliver. Thank you very much.
I think I have a plan of attack, but I just want to consult you and Tero with one more thing: is the BEST workflow at hand here (aka highest quality preservation, not concerning render times) for me to export the source .R3D with the noise reduction FIRST, then apply my color grading for final export? Or should I export source .R3D with color grading first, then apply noise reduction? Or will each process yield the same results?
Once again, thank you all for your support. Means the world!
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Hahaha. DING! DING! DING! Tero wins.
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It depends on where and how you plan to apply noise reduction.
First of all, have you tried adjusting the RED camera raw setting in Premiere (source settings)? This called up the raw controls and most of the tools from Redcine X Pro are there. If you change color to IPP2 you should see a denoise function, which affects chroma noise. You can also adjust ISO.
So if you intend to color correct in Premiere, make those adjustments first, then do Lumetri, then add Neat (or other noise reduction), and finally add FilmConvert. Render and come back in a month 🙂
If you intend to grade in Resolve, you have the full raw controls, plus Resolve’s noise reduction. If you go that route, you would XML the raw clips to Resolve. Grade, including internal NR. Then XML back to Premiere to conform (reconstruct) your sequence. Add Neat (or other) as needed, as well as FilmConvert. (Note you can also get FilmConvert for Resolve, which would let you integrate the process.)
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All noise reduction processes are slow renders. They get slower the higher the source and timeline resolution. Resolve has a considerably faster rendering engine than Premiere, but RED and NR is going to be slow, no matter what.
The third route would be a simpler roundtrip, but it limits your future options. That would be to strip out all effects and graphics from the sequence. Go into your RED settings (source settings) and set the files to log color space. Make sure you have a consistent temp/tint/exposure. Render the timeline out at timeline resolution as ProRes4444 or ProRes4444XQ.
Bring that long clip into Resolve and slice at the cut points. Grade. Then export the full movie again and bring that back into Premiere for other effects, FilmConvert, graphics, etc.
The reason that this might be preferable is so that you won’t have to rebuild effects, AE comps, and so on, once the sequence is back in Premiere. The downside is that the file is locked and flattened without handles on the clips. So potential future changes aren’t easily made. Plus the file is locked at the rendered resolution. If your original files were 6K and you rendered at 1080, you are at that size. If for some reason you needed to generate a 4K file later, you’d have to go through this process all over again. Or take the quality hit from an upconversion.
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Interesting update, Oliver!
I remember trying to adjust the denoiser via the RAW control panel, but for some reason, Premiere wouldn’t accept the adjustments (the slider would immediately slide back to zero). However, after clicking multiple times for some odd reason, the slider remained and…
…voila!
A LOT of the chroma noise disappeared which DRAMATICALLY affected the image quality, almost of the point of completely pleasing my obsessive eye. In fact, it almost increased the image quality so much that I’m debating even applying Neat Video at all. I’ll at least wait to see how the final render plays out.
Thank you so much, Oliver!
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Glad to hear it. Good luck.
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This is why RCX should be your first stop.
Besides First Light, there are options there to help prepare and preserve your RAW details.
However, I haven’t had the displeasure of having to do a whole feature that way.
Bits and pieces in Resolve is my experience using Neat Video.
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Just to keep this conversation going (and to hopefully prevent me from pulling out any more of my hair), another (much less severe) issue has arisen.
Now, for some odd reason, the noise profiles from my linked AE comps in the same timeline do NOT match the source .R3D’s in the same timeline, despite using the same exact clips and having the same exact RAW settings (having even adjusted the Linked Comp’s RAW denoiser settings to match the PP RAW settings). The Linked AE comps actually seem to remove A LOT more of the noise and make the image just a tad softer.
Any ideas?
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