When you say one first, and then the other, do you mean apply one, render, and then apply the other to that, or are you just talking about the order that you put them in the FX chain for a simultaneous processing?

I assume you mean the latter, to avoid degradation from multiple generations of rendering, but I would love to have you confirm/clarify.

It works quite well in VP22..... The other options out there falls very very short, they are much slower and not as good a result.... Hence Neat Video Pro is simply the best option.

No, you apply a filter chain: first AI smoothen, and then AI sharpen. And you adjust the filter in this sequence too.

And no, Neatvideo is not the best option automatically. If you have to denoise 40 hours of 1080 50p footage in the timeline, as I had it recently, and you have to render that with 3-5 fps with Neatvideo, you end up with render times of 400-500 hours.

400-500 hours equals 17-21 days!

But render time depends on your GPU

Jøran

Well, one conclusion I can draw from that is that, although it may lead to a better final result in terms of quality, at least based on this information, Neat is not any faster than the built-in denoise in Vegas. My testing of the built-in Vegas version increased my render time by a factor of 10, which seems to be in line with what Wolfgang is saying happens with Neat.

Or at the very least he seems to be saying that the render time will be roughly 10 times the runtime of the project. I suppose for a true apples to apples comparison we would have to render the same sample file with Nate, and then render it with the Vegas denoise.

I'm aware that neat allows you to download a demo, but it only works in such low razz that it would be of no use for me to test because I would never render and such a low resolution. My source. I'm willing to go with 4K, never mind 1080 or lower.

That said, I am aware that a simple reduction in resolution would probably provide denoising on its own, but again, I'm not willing to go all the way down to 1080 from 6K/4K. With this client, the precedent is already set that delivery is expected in 4K.

For anyone that's wondering, it's not like my footage is trash, overall it looks really nice, it's just that it had a lot of color changing backgrounds with stage lighting on a live performance (which of course means that I didn't have any control over lighting conditions and had to just deal and use high iso, as shooting wide open was not an option due to the need to capture a large area and have deep depth of field) so some things look totally fine, but some of the backdrop colors, especially if they're a little darker, get noticeably noisier than others.

Yes, Neat Video files should work fine in Vegas 22, assuming compatibility of your output format.

The reason NeatVideo is slow is because it is a conventional filter working at the kernel level. Slow and thorough. I use it almost exclusively for Analog tape camera source, often Hi-8 or DVCAM format, for which it was designed.

On the other hand, I prefer the built-in Vegas AI filters or Topaz for Digital Tape and SD card source, for which they were designed.

In evaluating your choice of cleanup tools for a particular project, the things a trained eye will look for include:

• Shadow noise vs. detail
• Shadow Gamma retention
• Relative lack of Banding and Oversharpening (fringes)
• Highlight Detail retention and overall Dynamic Range
• Natural look to faces and scenery, not plasticized by AI overprocessing.

Try to leave your footage as unprocessed as possible, keep in mind that a little improvement goes a long way, and remember the saying, "You can't make a Silk Purse from a Pig's Ear."

HTH

400-500 hours equals 17-21 days!

But render time depends on your GPU

Jøran

Very true, this is the problem. And the GPU is a GTX 3080 Ti 12 GB. So forget Neatvideo for that.

And the internal classical denoiser has the same problem. That is why I suggest the AI filter.

For anyone that's wondering, it's not like my footage is trash, overall it looks really nice, it's just that it had a lot of color changing backgrounds with stage lighting on a live performance (which of course means that I didn't have any control over lighting conditions and had to just deal and use high iso, as shooting wide open was not an option due to the need to capture a large area and have deep depth of field) so some things look totally fine, but some of the backdrop colors, especially if they're a little darker, get noticeably noisier than others.

Is this noticeable noise present in the footage or only after final rendering?

I do not have Neat Video, but I do have the Boris FX continuum, and last year they added AI (they call it ML) denoise which is very good albeit slow, I compared it against neat video (trial) and it was pretty much en par (and a lot easier to use).

To overcome the slowness I wrote a script to deactivate the Boris denoiser during edit, and activate it upon render...

I have and use NeatVideo and don't find it slow as it uses the GPU fully. Most of my noise issues are with older HD footage and there even with NV applied I can usually play it back in realtime.

Happy to do a test if you describe the exact parameters for the test. I haven't yet tested the new AI Fx. The semi-new VEGAS denoise was much slower not using much CPU or GPU last time I touched it.

400-500 hours equals 17-21 days!

But render time depends on your GPU

Jøran

@J-Toresen NeatVideo is very versatile the way it can run on CPU/CPU+GPU/GPU, and also it runs very well on CPU, chart shows a 13900K CPU beating a RTX2080Ti GPU

@Wolfgang S. With 40 hours of 1080 50p footage in the timeline, any denoising method you apply is gonna take a very looong time to render, and none would ever give a better result than neat video........ As a side note, the current version is way more faster than what it once was, plus, the greater your system processing resources the faster it renders.

@UltraVista

I know because I have used NeatVideo, and NeatImage, sinces the first version of both programs. I purchased NeatImage in 2004 and NeatVideo in 2006. I wrote the comment mostly as a joke. Sorry.

Jøran

The footage, with the same filters, renders on my Ryzen 3970X plus GPU 3080 TI 12GB with the Magix AVC Encoder with NVENC with 30-35 fps.

The filters applied are pan/crop, CGP, AI Smoother and AI sharpener.

Footage is 720x576 50i captured from old SVHD tapes, and is scaled up with project settings to 1080 50p.

So yes, that is demanding. But with 30-35 fps that is about 1.5 real time (ok, render speed declines over time what is another issue under discussion with the team).

But if you apply Neatvideo, ender speed falls down to the 3-5 fps, what is the factor 5-10.

While one can accept that for short videos, it is impossible to use that to denoise 40 hours. And that with hardware, that is shown in Todds list with the best performance.

But true is, that I do not use the latest version of Neatvideo. And I will test the benchmark on my machine too.

But what is also true is, that for my footage I receive great results with the new AI FILTERS Smoother and AI Sharper. And that render performance is great too.
 

I wonder if there is any quality difference between the Ai smoothing/sharpening and Neat video ?

I wonder if there is any quality difference between the Ai smoothing/sharpening and Neat video ?

I have not tested that.

I am experimenting with that technique now (the AI smooth then AI sharpen). Yay for adjustment layers!

I am also coming to the conclusion that in this case, I need to learn a bit more about dealing with noise in a particular color as opposed to noise reduction generally speaking. In the case of the footage I am currently dealing with, there are sections where the overall exposure doesn't really change, but when the background changes from blue to either green or orange, it gets perceptibly "noisier."

@Wolfgang S. you are definitely right that the AI smooth/sharpen combo renders fairly quickly. It is pretty cool overall, not sure yet if it's my answer in this case though.

I downloaded the demo of Neat, but as it only allows for 720p the results of the test tell me nothing that I can directly apply to my current project. We all already know that rendering to a lower resolution reduces perceived noise, but the project was shot in 6K and client expects a 4K render, so going down to 1080p or (gasp) 720p is not an option in this case.

Obviously the best option for noise reduction is to avoid it entirely by lighting differently, but those of us who do (among other things) live event work don't always have that option...hence why I am in here looking for feedback about Neat, and other tips/suggestions, which, as always, the community is right there to provide!

RevisionFX DE:Noise is another option that is available for Vegas..... But unfortunately it is the slowest of them all.

I've found BorisFX BCC+DeNoise ML to be a one click wonder. But it comes with Continuum Complete. Yeah, pricey, but around Black Friday, the sale is great. And you get a ton of plugins.

I am experimenting with that technique now (the AI smooth then AI sharpen). Yay for adjustment layers!

I am also coming to the conclusion that in this case, I need to learn a bit more about dealing with noise in a particular color as opposed to noise reduction generally speaking. In the case of the footage I am currently dealing with, there are sections where the overall exposure doesn't really change, but when the background changes from blue to either green or orange, it gets perceptibly "noisier."

you are definitely right that the AI smooth/sharpen combo renders fairly quickly. It is pretty cool overall, not sure yet if it's my answer in this case though.

I downloaded the demo of Neat, but as it only allows for 720p the results of the test tell me nothing that I can directly apply to my current project. We all already know that rendering to a lower resolution reduces perceived noise, but the project was shot in 6K and client expects a 4K render, so going down to 1080p or (gasp) 720p is not an option in this case.

 

Obviously the best option for noise reduction is to avoid it entirely by lighting differently, but those of us who do (among other things) live event work don't always have that option...hence why I am in here looking for feedback about Neat, and other tips/suggestions, which, as always, the community is right there to provide!

@jonnymomovies If you want someone to test NeatVideo for you at your chosen resolutions please make a clip available for download and specify the problem you are trying to solve. Neat lets you adjust the strength of reduction for luminance vs chroma noise.

I think it's a good tool and was worth the investment.

@RogerS that is very kind of you to offer but the issue with that is...giving you a raw video file (which was shot in VLog) is not going to be as useful, because it's out of context. The footage in question is in a session with lots of other stuff going on already (pretty far along in the edit/treatment phase) and I am just trying to decide:
(see below for all details) is it even worth it to apply NR at all, and if so, which one/how applied?

However I will let you tell me your thoughts for sure, and whether it would be worth it to get and run Neat on this 3 hour video to be delivered in UHD

To that end and to perhaps facilitate discussion in context, I am enclosing three screengrabs direct from the Vegas session. Here are relevant facts and my observations thus far:

Relevant facts:
1) Overall, I don't think ANY of them look BAD, I'm just trying to decide if they can be made better, and if so, will they be better enough to make it worth the money and time costs of obtaining and using something like Neat. On a 3 hour video (imagine the render times! But ultimately I will let quality result win over time concerns) I also feel that during moving playback, noise is less apparent and less of a (potential) issue than screengrabs (IMHO screengrabs from video always look worse than either still photos or video in motion)

2) All 3 caps (taken by hitting the floppy disk icon in Vegas' Preview window with it set to Best/Full) are with the same settings in the same 2 minute section of the song. In full disclosure, this is lightly graded, and I currently have a light sharpen on (new Vegas AI sharpen). @Wolfgang S.I have tinkered with your combo of AI smoothen/AI Sharpen but that is currently off, just using a very lightly-applied AI sharpen at the moment)

3) I THOUGHT I had decided everything last night and went with it, but...I tried doing an overnight render of the entire kit and caboodle. I've done about 20 succesful tests before on the new rig, but all shorter slices, this was my first test of rendring the entire 3 hour thing. After much hemming and hawing over encode methods/settings, I tried using MainConcept AVC (h264) 2-pass at for an 8-bit .mp4 result, and sadly, woke up to see my first crash (or maybe freeze is a better word, as the program was still open but unresponsive at 7% complete after many hours) and no fully-rendered file, but that's another question. However, as I am now back in the edit pondering things again, it got me re-thinking about this NR question as I have another, uhm, "opportunity" (due to incomplete render the first try) to tweak settings for visual effect.
p.s. side note: I'm very confident that the render failure wasn't due to temps, this thing never gets above 45C-50C or so even under 100% load, have watched it for hours, and this case/AIO cooler combo is insanely effective for cooling! Sadly I don't know WHY it crashed...or more accurately, froze but again I am not here to solve that as much as decide about NR.no NR and if yes, how

My observations (feel free to disagree):
The blue, to my eyes, appears smoother and less noisy in all respects, and in that regard, is how I wish they all looked in terms of smoothness/lack of perceptible noise/grain
The green is more noisy/blocky/poke-y
The burnt orange is between those two

The screencaps:

I am aware that as shown in these caps, the blue one probably has just simply a higher overall amount of light in the shot and that might affect things a little, but the lights are constantly changing in this video so it is hard to find exact matches in that regard. Although, my eyes tell me (during playback both in edit and in test renders) that even in other songs where they are BLASTING the intensity of the greens and orange-y colors, it still looks more noisy than the blue.

So to sum up (assuming of course that I am even providing good info to even evaluate):
Does this seem worth it to do NR in some form, all things considered?
If so, is Neat the answer?
Am I right that some colors play better than others? If so, what to do (again, would Neat help that?)

Thank you (all of you) even if all you do is read this and tell me to relax, or school me, or whatever 😁

System specs again in case it matters:
i9-12900K stock settings

64 GB DDR5

Two NVME drives (Samsung 990 Pro), one for boot/program drive and the other with all the files on it
4070 Ti Super
AIO cooler
achieved "legendary" score on 3D Mark both CPU and GPU tests
Source files: 10 bit HEVC 6K from Panasonic S5iiX, VLog
Vegas Pro 22
very clean and new Windows 11 install, nothing else running
 

Neat is going to give the best NR results all around, it's always been the best and has yet to be dethroned. I recommend getting it not just for this project, but for any project. It also has the best GPU support of any NR plugin I've used, and has a tuning feature that lets you choose the optimal configuration of GPU/CPU cores to use when rendering to get maximum speed. Just be sure not to set the VRAM usage in NV's settings too high, if you don't leave enough for VEGAS to do its thing, it can cause a crash.