what is the most time/cost effective way to reduce noise/grain in ppcc 2014?

[Walter Soyka]

[Wolf Lawrence] “on the import of AE-rendered files back into PPro, do i do the last step of ‘replacing’ in the project pane by right clicking ‘replace footage…’ on each track? is that how easy it will be? thanks again.”

Not on each track in the timeline — on each video file in the project panel.

You could also try making all the media offline and then relinking it to the new files.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Austin Reeves]

I also wanted to chime in with Walter as I believe his advice is very solid.

Before:

Back up your project file elsewhere JUST IN CASE. Since you’re going to be disconnecting media you want to have an easy way to “go back.”

AE:

• Drag all raw files into your project bin.
• Highlight all those files and drag to the New Sequence icon and create a sequence for each file (which will be created at the frame size and rate of the original media). Importantly this will name each sequence the name of the original raw clip.
• In the sequence for your first raw clip, apply the Noise Reduction effect and set it as you’d like.
• Copy that effect and paste it into the clip on each sequence of all your raw clip sequences.
• Optionally you can add in some noise back to the clip as well to improve the final product as you mentioned.

Pick 1 of the 2 options below:

• Highlight one sequence and drag it to the RENDER QUEUE (or use the menu option). Set the render location for a new folder such as \Denoised RAW. Then drag the rest of your sequences down. (Reason for this is all new sequences added will default to the render location of the previously set file. Just saves you doing it a hundred times)

or

• Add all sequences to the render queue and on the rollout menu option next to OUTPUT TO: where the filename is set (little down arrow), click the arrow and choose CUSTOM. Paste something like this into the popup box: [compName]-DENOISE.[fileextension]
• That will add the “-DENOISE” to all your original raw filename, allowing you to keep them in the same folder but know which is the original. Note you must do this for each sequence output one by one.
• Now just render. Remember Denoising is an extremely intensive process. It will take some time. I also recommend enabling Multi-processing for this process as the memory overhead isn’t that bad.

Premiere

• Once all the renders are done, as Walter said, you can set your media OFFLINE by highlighting the source files in Premiere and then right-clicking, choosing MAKE OFFLINE. I personally would do this after saving my project to something new like ” Denoised.prproj”
• Optionally you can now in the search box above your project bin type “OFFLINE” which will give you all your offline media nice and neat.
• Highlight the files and right click, choosing LINK MEDIA
• In the pop-up window, click LOCATE
• A window similar to Media Browser will pop up, note you may want to uncheck “Display Only Exact Name Matches” at the bottom if you added the DENOISE to the filename as I mentioned above. Otherwise it will only show exact name matches.
• Locate your denoised clip and click OK. Depending on the option you chose above you may need to locate each raw denoised clip one at a time or it may link them all immediately to the new path.

At this point you should be done. Your timeline should perform as it did before and your camera raw files show be denoised and you can continue to edit and tweak as you see fit. Hopefully this makes the whole process a little more clear. And for everyone else, please feel free to point out if i made a mistake anywhere in this or if you recommend another process.

—
Austin Reeves
AR&C
https://www.austinreeves.com
Production & Post-Production Services
Washington, DC