You can even use Virtualdub filters in Vegas using Satish's plugin. I've done this and the results aren't bad.

"I've seen one posting on a site which referred to VirtualDub but I was hoping that I could do something similar in Vegas 4. "

No reason not to use V/Dub really. It is a linear editor, works in a different fashion then NLEs like Vegas or Premiere so it's faster doing this sort of thing, and has a LOT of filters written by folks to solve your exact problem. If you don't want to render twice, then as suggested try the V/Dub plugin from Satish for Vegas, or try a frame serve from V/Dub to Vegas.

Not that the built-in filters don't do a great job, but BillyBoy really isn't kidding about render times.

I'm kind of curious how others go about removing 'video noise'. I'm mainly referring to interlacing, stray artifacts, blockiness, etc..

Myself, if the source file is rather lower quality I tend to 'pre-process' in VirtualDub before I even bring it into Vegas. This can of course create some pretty big files, still I find that the process flys along at a good pace in VD.

What say you?

"I'm kind of curious how others go about removing 'video noise'. I'm mainly referring to interlacing, stray artifacts, blockiness, etc.."

Normally run it through V/Dub first myself. Doing a lot of heavier compression, I usually shy off from anything really drastic in filter settings - generally go to the strength where it looks fairly clean in the output window of V/Dub, then back off some. If I filter too heavily it removes some of the shadow detail that exists mainly in noise, then wmv 9, real9 etc. renders at lower bitrates take these areas of reduced color/lightness, and don't record any detail, too often showing blocks. Another prob. I've encountered with agressive filtering is smoke or clouds that jump, and even induced mosquitto noise and/or halos around moving subjects as the noise is filtered everywhere else.

Settings vary from video to video, but I most often crop the edges and resize using bicubic with interlace selected, followed by the built-in deinterlace set to blur - with older versions of V/Dub, had a prob with some codecs rendered out of V/dub working in Vegas with interlaced. If it's really bad I'll add a denoise first, but usually like to provide all the info possible for the resize and deinterlace filters. Lately I've been using the denoise mmx set to 6, & chroma noise reduction at narrow and 50%. I'll use the temporal cleaner or smoother if it needs it badly enough, but then I almost always have to go through the video replacing various scenes with less filtered versions.

RE; Speed... Usually moves along pretty good, and I haven't been able to find any quality decrease going through an extra render.

Thanks a lot for your input. You are correct. There isn't really any reason why I shouldn't be using Vegas, I just would like to not learn another product and don't like having different projects and products all over the place. But if a specialized tool is what's required then I'll give it a go. There's no point in sawing a piece of wood with a hammer now is there??

Thanks again for the responses.

What you may also want to do on a rainy weekend or when you have nothing better to do is do a web search for VitrualDub Filters. Many of the people that have developed them also include fairly detailed instructions (unsually a web page) that's part of the filter package. Also try searching the web for specific problems like interlacing, video noise, etc.. and you can stumble onto some interesting sites. One of these days once I can see better again I have to organize by favorties list and put links to some of the better sites on my web site.

I would go the "VD" route - not sure about the acronym Billyboy.

I prefer vitualdubmod as it tidies up the VD interface

Some of the noise reduction filters for VHS I use are

flaxen VHS, Spot Remover and Deshaker as often the footage is bouncing around the screen on older VHS tapes.

There are a few others but the above may be a good start.

Regards, PAW

Here is a link to a thread where I previously answered this question.

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=186094

Virtualdbub is definitely the way to go. You can use it within Vegas with Satish' plugins, or outside Vegas as a pre-process before editing.