Neat Video Sony Vegas Crack
Sherlyn Rakestrow
So, I know I'm late to the party, but I've never used noise reduction applications for my NLE's. But today, for fun, I downloaded Neat Video v4. And to be hones I WAS BLOWN AWAY. It just deleted the noise like it was some kind of filter over my image keeping details that I didn't even saw because of the noise. SO, I decided to just pay for it right away but stopped myself and goggled the product because it had a Home and Pro option. I wanted to know if it's worth paying the extra 15bucks just get to work with higher res than 1080p.
So all these threads came up saying it has tons of problems with Mac graphic drivers and yada yada. Some people also said just get Denoiser from RedGiant cause it's cheaper (I have a college ID so would get educational discount).
I heavily tested both and all the other NR software for video on the market. Neat video is worth the extra over all of them, it's simply magic. The strength lies in how much control it gives you, it lets you specify the exact type of noise in the image you want to eliminate and gives you fine control over every single little parameter in advanced mode, all the other's work without profiles for each image, they just apply it globally, faster for beginners but the results are markedly inferior. Neat video is the best 100$ I've ever spend in my video production quality.
How fast is Neat Video on your computers? For my i5 3570k + 7970 Ghz it takes 2 minutes to compute a 10 sec 1280x720 50p footage (demo version's resolution limit). It would take ages to work with 4K. While Davinci Resolve's noise reduction really use the GPU, and it can reach "even" 6 fps with 4K > 1080 noise reduction + downsampling. Of course Neat's result are waaay better.
Oh I just found out they introduced an entirely new product, Neat Video V4 claiming even higher performance and pretty bold claims on removing ''codec'' artefacts and even removing artefacts introduced by in-camera noise reduction, and claims it can remove dust, hairs, specks of footage shot on film entirely, as well as better performance with changing scenes by changing profiles gradually, they also claim better sharpening algorithm with reduced halos and digital artefacts (and its sharpening was great anyway yet halos were a bit problematic). They also introduced a ''Professional Quality'' mode where it produces ''better NR results and preserves detail at the cost of 1.5x to 4x slower rendering''. All very exciting to be honest. Bad news is I have to buy again as an owner of the older version V3.
Deadcode: It's not fast, it is a heavy software to run, slightly heavier than all the other NR ones, but worth it of course. I don't think speed can be held against it since no other software does the same faster, and also as it depends on your machine. Noise reduction is the slowest process in my workflow, so I do all my work, produce a ProRes file of the finished product, apply NR (and make different profiles for drastically different scenes) and just let it render, as a final last step, so it doesn't bother me even if it takes hours or a day. I don't do it before editing, that would be frustrating having to wait, plus my tests showed much better results when it's applied after grading rather than before,
1- It's limited to 1080p. Since you only work in 1080p that shouldn't be a problem right? no. For one reason, it's the best NR software I use for still photographs, and having only 1080p as a maximum resolution limit would kill its use for photography purposes, where it's magical, even better than video results. It's become a standard workflow for me to apply NR to me photography in my Video editor after setting the resolution to 4-6K and applying neat video. If you do any kind of photography, don't buy the home edition for that reason alone, you'll miss a lot. Plus you don't know how soon you get a 4K camera, they are at 500$ now, believe me you'll go 4K very soon and that will be the standard and you'll regret it, and even if you don't mind these, another reason is:
2- It cannot be used for commercial uses, only for home videos. That's a big, big limitation. Even if you believe you're not going to be producing professional videography right now, who knows what will happen tomorrow? then you'll regret buying the Home edition and end up unable to use Neat Video for anything important. Even if that's not a problem, another reason:
I have the neat video plugin (pro version) for sony vegas. Ive been very happy with the results though I do not use it very often, I usually like to leave a little grain or add some anyway and I do not really like the look of footage that has been heavily denoised. I have never had any issues with things taking a long time to render either.
If you denoise a 4k file and then downscale it to 1080p, whatever noise may be left will be much more fine. Also, downscaling 4k to 1080p without denoising generally results in a much nicer looking grain than if you just shot in 1080p. I would definitely recommend not denoising an image so much as for it to have absolutely no grain left. a little texture is a good thing
You can denoise using Neat Video to have a nice solid base without that ugly digital noise. Now, denoised footage can really give off this watercolor painting vibe. So, to add some definition back in there, you use film grain derived from scanned-in film stock. So yeah, you can add some back in there. Et voil. Looks a lot better. Nice and organic. With nicely shot footage and a proper grade that will definitly give you a nice look.
Yes, the chroma noise removal is awesome, clears up my BMPCC footage with a few clicks while I still retain all the luminance grain for an organic look. The Pro version sounds like a good long term investment, I wouldn't go with the cheaper one.
That said, some encoders are better than others. The main encoder in Handbrake that people are suing is x264. This is an AVC/H.264 encoder just like the Mainconcept AVC and Sony AVC encoders native to Vegas. At lower bitrates the x264 encoder will look better than to encoders in Vegas, when all are outputting the same bitrate. At high bitrates they all look the same. Higher bitrate means higher visual quality within the same encoder.
I would recommend that if you use Handbrake, do not use the Advanced tab. The standard presets designed by the developers of x264 are good. They are smarter than you or I in what all the individual options do.
The standard presets go from faster to slower encoding speed. The standard recommendation is use the slowest you can bear. Does this faster to slower speed mean lesser to better visual quality. Yes and No. If you are using the CRF bitrate mode then NO. If you are using the average bitrate mode then YES.
What do I do?
For uploading to Smugmug (my equal to Youtube), I render a file using Sony AVC at about 2X the bitrate that Smugmug re-encodes to (3.2Mbps main profile). That is excessive but this is still only 6.4-7Mbs bitrate at 720p30.
I have used Handbrake at High profile, fast/faster preset, crf 26/27. I have also used two pass average bitrate at about 5-6Mbps, High profile, medium preset. But these modes require I render a high quality intermediate from Vegas to use in Handbrake. The single render from Vegas is just quicker.
when in Vegas (I use pro 13) and it comes to render for using websites or youtube I presume I still use that to render and can carry on with the MainConcept AVC using the Internet HD 720p template I was using?
(any other settings to select while in this template or would you suggest another one and which one and settings)
Then I presume bring that render file into handbrake and use handbrakes the standard setting for it not any advnaced settings correct?
Mainconcept AVC Internet 720p30 is 8Mbps average bitrate. This works but is excessive, IMO. You can customize that template and go lower to get a smaller upload, like I do as previous described. Places like Youtube re-encode the file to around 2.8-3.2Mbps.
Either encode directly to something smaller by changing the bitrate in the template(s) and upload that. Or encode to a high quality, very large file, intermediate to feed Handbrake for you final encode. The encode to an intermediate loses basically nothing and then your final encode in Handbrake is the only place you get any loss you might notice. I gave some options in my previous post about intermediate encodes. Of course, you do get some loss since the online video service re-encodes everything we upload.
The templates in Vegas are good starting points, and the Internet ones are conservative, in my opinion, and you can get some smaller uploads. If that matters to you, then customize them for your specific needs. That is what I do as stated in my previous post. Additionally I bump the audio bitrate up to 192Kbps since the online services are going to re-encode audio as well as video.
Now I encode Sony AVC at a higher bitrate. Say 50% higher, 4.5Mbps, and compare that to the 3Mbps Handbrake encode. At some point the Sony AVC, with more bitrate (more gas) will look the same (drive as far) as the Handbrake encode.
As previously stated I am doubling the bitrate my online service encodes to. I use Sony AVC because it is faster on my particular machine. That is very conservative amount, and comes to about 6.5Mbps. If I REALLY wanted to get smaller uploads I could push it to maybe 50%, but I just do not want to bother. 6.5Mbps is a very manageable upload. Conservative and no worries, ever.
I compare the online service result to the video uploaded. The upload is always a bit better than the result. The result is fixed by the encoded bitrate. Uploading something twice as good as the result and 10 times as good will get the same results. The 10 times bigger one will just take longer to upload.
You said no need to further use handbrake if my bit rate is adjusted as handbrake reduces even more so defeats the object
(UNLESS I use a very high render setting in Vegas and bring that in for handbrake to do its work and reduce it to final out put