Calibrating NeatVideo - best workflow?

[Les C.]

I haven't made up my mind about using the calibration target. http://www.neatimage.com/testtarget.html

I had one printed 11 x 14 and mounted on foam-core. Calibrated a well lit shot, and the auto-calibration didn't get any of the upper or lower values.

I emailed tech support on this, wondering if I should have shot some frames a few stops above and below, so that I'd have some samples for the upper and lower values?

They were against this, said to let NeatVideo extrapolate the curve from the existing data points - and this would be better.

Another thought - as the calibration target squares are solid, they probably compress quite well, and as the goal is to calibrate for noise ... I'm not sure it's going to correspond to actual noise generated by the sensor/compression combination when shooting a real-life scene, especially in low light or in a complex scene.

Can anyone shed light on the best NeatVideo workflow for calibration, etc.?

BTW - they also mentioned that you should shoot the target each time you shoot, in that lighting, shutter, etc. It doesn't seem you can create and save a calibration, and then re-use it - unless it's for an identical scene.

I also noticed that NeatVideo behaves differently in different programs.

In AE (or maybe it was in Premiere - or both?), it would say there was 'clipping in the X channel' quite often when dragging a rectangle. NeatVideo said this wasn't' really clipping, but not enough noise.

In Eyeon Fusion, it didn't object in the same way (I guess it found enough noise).

Great software, but ... I haven't learned the best way to use it yet.

[Patrick O'Sullivan]

I find the best results come from grabbing the little rectangle table on a noisy shot and just floating around for the highest percentage hit on a project by project basis then going into the fine tune sections and getting just the right amount of removal. Works flawlessly.
Real simple and quick.

[BRANDON JAMESON]

I find the best results come from grabbing the little rectangle table on a noisy shot and just floating around for the highest percentage hit on a project by project basis then going into the fine tune sections and getting just the right amount of removal. Works flawlessly.
Real simple and quick.

Me too..great software.

[Trevor Meeks]

WORKFLOW Section is over here

[Les C.]

I find the best results come from grabbing the little rectangle table on a noisy shot and just floating around for the highest percentage hit on a project by project basis then going into the fine tune sections and getting just the right amount of removal. Works flawlessly.
Real simple and quick.

Patrick - I've really enjoyed your Resolve tutorials!!!! I check your vimeo page regularly for anything new. Great work!!!

BTW - one other thing NeatVideo confirmed, is that it should be run as the first node.

I noticed that you were running it after the Resolve export.

I'm considering just adjusting the basics of the R3D in AE/Premiere and rendering out to an image sequence for use in Resolve - as I'd really like to send it the best image (which would be an R3D, but ... without OFX plug-in support, this sounds like the lesser of the evils to me.)

But, I haven't really tested extensively.

[Patrick O'Sullivan]

Thanks Les

I would definitely test it for yourself.
I spent more time than I'd like to admit testing all the various ways of outputting NR footage and there are massive differences in the results of different workflows.

I, of course, think my workflow ends with the most pleasing image and the best noise reduction or I'd do something else.

Doing a NR pass before going into resolve just doesn't work as smoothly in my opinion. But I'd love to be swayed in that direction

[Phil Holland]

This is how I use and setup Neat Video, and I've been using it for a while.

- One day, maybe a Sunday, you'll have a fun day shooting well evenly lit out of focus grey cards at each ISO you deem noise reduction suitable for.
- It is useful to have something say in the foreground with a good amount of detail and a nice variation from highlights to shadows. (I used a pot full of dried plants)
- Make sure you do a black shading prior to doing this.
- After you are done shooting all of this material bring it back into Adobe After Effects or Premiere Pro and load up Neat Video on each clip.
- Make sure you are working at full debayer.
- Customize your settings for each individual ISO rating to your liking of acceptable noise reduction with adequate resolution.
- Save your settings as something simple like "redSX_4k_ISO0800", "epicM_5k_ISO5000", etc....

Now when applying noise reduction there's really two times you can do it. Before color work and after color work. I tend to do it at the end if I don't "push" things around too much. Occasionally I'll do it at the beginning however. Just depends on the situation.

Interestingly enough even with all of your presets that you've made if you get crazy with the luminance curve (sometimes I can't control myself) you may find that you still have to tweak things in Neat Video, but this should cover you about 95% of the time.

I do this for every camera I shoot with.

A side note, not all lenses are created equally and we are all working in raw. Remember beyond noise reduction Neat Video can also perform sharpening on your material. If I use an Unsharp Mask or some other sharpening outside of Neat Video I do it after noise reduction.

[Les C.]

Thanks Les

I would definitely test it for yourself.
I spent more time than I'd like to admit testing all the various ways of outputting NR footage and there are massive differences in the results of different workflows.

I, of course, think my workflow ends with the most pleasing image and the best noise reduction or I'd do something else.

Doing a NR pass before going into resolve just doesn't work as smoothly in my opinion. But I'd love to be swayed in that direction

I agree your work looks terrific!!! There's nothing wrong with the quality that I can see.

But, as the R3D RAW dialog gets setup first either in Resolve or AE/Premiere (and after that dialog, you're out of 'RAW' mode), if one were to output to an essentially lossless 4k sequence, and was able to de-noise first (as well as sharpen by a very small amount) using the R3D rather than the final 1080p image sequence, it ?might? have some image advantages?

As you say, I'll have to do my own testing - and for a well lit scene, the noise may be minimal anyway. I'll have to get further along the learning curve.

This is how I use and setup Neat Video, and I've been using it for a while.

- One day, maybe a Sunday, you'll have a fun day shooting well evenly lit out of focus grey cards at each ISO you deem noise reduction suitable for.
- It is useful to have something say in the foreground with a good amount of detail and a nice variation from highlights to shadows. (I used a pot full of dried plants)
- Make sure you do a black shading prior to doing this.
- After you are done shooting all of this material bring it back into Adobe After Effects or Premiere Pro and load up Neat Video on each clip.
- Make sure you are working at full debayer.
- Customize your settings for each individual ISO rating to your liking of acceptable noise reduction with adequate resolution.
- Save your settings as something simple like "redSX_4k_ISO0800", "epicM_5k_ISO5000", etc....

Now when applying noise reduction there's really two times you can do it. Before color work and after color work. I tend to do it at the end if I don't "push" things around too much. Occasionally I'll do it at the beginning however. Just depends on the situation.

Interestingly enough even with all of your presets that you've made if you get crazy with the luminance curve (sometimes I can't control myself) you may find that you still have to tweak things in Neat Video, but this should cover you about 95% of the time.

I do this for every camera I shoot with.

A side note, not all lenses are created equally and we are all working in raw. Remember beyond noise reduction Neat Video can also perform sharpening on your material. If I use an Unsharp Mask or some other sharpening outside of Neat Video I do it after noise reduction.

Interesting workflow for NeatVideo!

BTW - as to sharpening in NeatVideo, I remember Photoshop actions from The Light's Right Studio and his pdf on sharpening that advocated sharpening in stages, with a small amount at the very start.

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/photoshop-tools.htm

That's what I'm tending to do with NeatVideo, apply some sharpening at that first noise-removal stage. But ... certainly need to do some real testing to find the 'best' sharpening workflow.

[DL Fitch]

I just got 3.5 million YouTube hits with some NASA footage of the rover landing that I cleaned up with Neat Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZX5GRPnd4U

It was my first time using it with out a purpose-shot calibration target, but I used some stationary frames from the end of the landing sequence and the results were way better than expected. Maybe I was being too careful with it before...

[TonySegreto]

Very cool rover footage! and good thread =P