A good denoising filter?

Sebaz wrote on 6/27/2010, 9:28 AM
I'm looking for a good and preferably free denoising filter. Specifically, for the grain created by the camera in poor light when there's a dark background, like a maroon curtain. I tried the one in New Blue FX's Video Essentials, and it's not bad, but it's pretty slow, and I'm not willing to spend $80 for it. What I'm doing now is running the file through Virtual Dub because there's a decent denoising filter for it called MSU Denoiser, which is fast, but it involves importing the file into VDub through an Avisynth script and then rendering to a Lagarith YUY2 file to import into Vegas, which doesn't play in real time, so even without further effects, anything that involves that file needs pre-rendering.

As far as I can see, Vegas itself doesn't have anything for denoising, no more than applying a slight blur. Any other suggestions?

Comments

rs170a wrote on 6/27/2010, 9:33 AM
Courtesy of Mike Crash, his free Dynamic Noise Reduction filter (and many more excellent ones too).

Mike
ritsmer wrote on 6/27/2010, 10:12 AM
I use the Neat Video all the time.
In my setup it does miracles - for 50 US - I think it was.

See http://www.neatvideo.com/ - they have a trial.

BTW: Do not set the correction percentage over some 85 percent or it will look artificial - but that's all in the manual.
rdolishny wrote on 6/27/2010, 4:49 PM
Thanks for the link. Nice filters!
Laurence wrote on 6/27/2010, 8:45 PM
I use both the Mike Crash and Neat Video. There are times when the more expensive Neat Video is like magic and removes noise you'd never expect it to, but there are other situations were the Mike Crash denoiser actually looks better. I need them both.

Neat video needs a pretty big chunk of one surface or color in order to work it's magic. Sometimes you just don't have what you need and it doesn't work very well. Mike Crash fills in for this by working moderately well all the time.
Sebaz wrote on 6/27/2010, 9:28 PM
Thanks, actually of those filters the one that works better for me is the Smart Smoother, because the Denoiser is temporal and produces a blur that I don't like at all. The other one can take care of noise better, although it also takes a lot longer to process.
ritsmer wrote on 6/27/2010, 11:43 PM
Smart Smoother?? sounds like something I could use too..

I have downloaded it and installed it - (from Mike Crash version 1.22) - it said Installation OK - but I can not find it in Vegas - I run Windows 7 64 bit and have looked in both Vegas 9.0e 32 and 64 bit versions.

Where could it be?
farss wrote on 6/28/2010, 12:29 AM
Those filters are only 32 bit, sorry.
It'd be nice if someone could update them to 64 it however I did read of someone who'd looked into and decided it'd be quite a task.

Bob.
John_Cline wrote on 6/28/2010, 1:48 AM
NeatVideo comes as both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
Laurence wrote on 6/28/2010, 6:47 AM
The other one that hasn't been mentioned is the one that is part of the New Blue Video Essentials package and also comes in both 32bit and 64bit versions. While I love most of the New Blue Video Essentials plugins, this is perhaps my least favorite. It doesn't get rid of all the noise, renders slowly and flickers as well. They are a great company though and everything else they do is top notch so it wouldn't surprise me at all if at some point their noise reduction plugin is improved.
LReavis wrote on 6/28/2010, 7:13 PM
"Smart Smoother? I have downloaded it and installed it - (from Mike Crash version 1.22) - it said Installation OK - but I can not find it in Vegas:

You should see it in the list of video FX when you click on the FX icon on any clip. I see it in both Vegas 8c and 9c-32bit. But, as I recall, the installer for Smart Smoother is set up for Vegas 8. Try installing it again and look carefully at the directory that it's going to be installed in - chances are you'll need to manually find the equivalent directory for Vegas 9 so that it will get installed there.
John_Cline wrote on 6/28/2010, 9:15 PM
Here is a technical comparison of a bunch of different noise reduction filters:

http://www.yuvsoft.com/pdf/Video_Denoiser_Comparison.pdf

The MSU Denoiser which operates in Virtual Dub uses GPU acceleration and does a very good job.

http://www.compression.ru/video/denoising/index_en.html

I still think Neat Video does the best job overall.

ritsmer wrote on 6/28/2010, 11:57 PM
Hi Larry -
Thanks! Now I see it.
Getting older...