Sorry to jump in as I know you were directing your post to Bob. Just wanted to mention that I've gotten some good results using Sony's Median filter to deal with video noise in dark AVCHD footage. The preset "light noise reduction" seems to work pretty good.

Steve

I've had good luck rendering AVC with Handbrake and using its Denoising filter at "weak."
Effective at reducing macroblocking in near-black areas.
Handbrake also encodes 25% faster than MC in my tests using identical settings.
Beware that the "Deblocking" filter in HB is pre-render only, so you would use it if your original MPEGs (or whatever) have the problem.

Thanks guys.

I've played around with various denoisers with varied results. But I have found what works reliably (and best) is plain old Gaussian blur set for vertical/horizontal at 0.003. This setting also seems to work best in PP.

Bit of a shame though.... if you set the track up for a G blur... you knock out ANY chance of "no re-compress" render

A question arises though....
The project preset comes with a blur setting where you can set up various blur types. Does this setting only affect the preview playback, or is it supposed to have an effect on the final render?

If it's supposed to end up on the final render...... it isn't.

The blur setting I think you're referring to in the project is for Motion Blur. You will notice the difference although it is subtle. In those settings the Gaussian refers to the shape of the fall off over the set of frames.
It has zero to do with Gaussian Blur.

To use motion blur you have to add a MB envelope to the Video Buss Master track and then set that for how many frame of it you want.

Bob.

PS, best noise reduction plugin I've found is a light :)

"PS, best noise reduction plugin I've found is a light :) "

Good advise Bob.... and thanks for the info.

I wonder though.... The mainconcept mpeg2 encoder doesn't seem to be anywhere near as sensitive to noise. In fact I almost never have to worry about the noise affecting the mpeg2 encodes. They ALWAYS come out cleaner than with the avc encodes. This is also true with the encodes in Premiere pro.... it's all pretty much a carbon copy between Vegas and premiere. The resulting encodes (and remedies) in PP are almost exactly the same as in Vegas. It can't be strictly an encoder issue since I'm using MainConcept in PP and Sony avc encoder in Vegas.... all with the same outcome. Could it simply be the avc compression scheme itself that is responsible for such lousy response to video noise?

FWIW something I observed when Real & WinMedia were new kids on the playground that I think apply to their distant cousin AVC.

The way the compression schemes work, they tried to eliminate redundant data, more or less just like mpg2 recording changes in P & B frames, ignoring static data between I frames. Before post processing became normal for playback, they tended to be very aggressive too, & today it's still possible, particularly with winmedia, to see blockiness where it doesn't record changes that it should -- a key frame shows up & bam, you've got a jump, with all that change happening in 1 frame, then nothing till the next key.

There were/are 3 ways to ('least partially) cure it encoding, & maybe 2 to prevent it that I was ever aware of. One way to prevent it, at least partially is plenty of light, since it's the light & most importantly shadows that usually creates the motion on the backgrounds to begin with. Another that helps is recording more data to start with.

When it comes to encoding, one reason for the history lesson was that Real decided the best way to fight it was to soften the backgrounds -- you can see it today & it works well enough that Vegas has traditionally always softened wmv it encodes. Real in effect masks the main subject in the frame & blurs the rest.

Another way that's been partially incorporated into wmv encoding over the years, is to lower the max & up the minimum bit rates, since those jumping backgrounds are the result of a too aggressive encoder. Won't help with the Sony, but the MC at least gives you average & max. Freeware normally gives you average & max.

And the 3rd way was/is more appropriate for web video than HD, but looks better than jumping blocks at any rate, & that's to add enough motion that the encoder says hey, I better record that. How you add motion is up to you, but I found something more like random particle noise better than other sorts, perhaps a very small amount of film grain? If the background's in one part of the scene, there's always masks &/or keying. Before Vegas was born I used to use an intermediate encode with PicVid set to lower quality. ;-)

Noise is motion is always less efficient. The encoder creates blockiness dumping data, recording less data to make a smaller file. When you have blockiness it figures (wrongly) that the background wasn't changing enough to warrant the bandwidth to save it, & that bandwidth would be better used elsewhere. OTOH, forcing the encoder to save the background isn't any less efficient than if it had recorded it's motion to begin with. Best remedy is to shoot in only perfect environs with perfect equipment -- since few ever get that, you'll not have any video to work with, so no problems what-so-ever. ;?P