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what are limitations of Neat Video Demo

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2016 4:36 am
by Leonard
what are the limitations of the Neat Video Demo , particulately for Resolve or Premiere?

Thanks,
Lenny

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2016 10:30 am
by NVTeam
Please see the specification of all differences between editions.

Thank you,
Vlad

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2016 12:48 pm
by Leonard
Thanks Vlad,
I'm wanting to test whether some 4K footage that was shot a little soft ( mixed the focus mark) can be saved by Neat which I can then recommend to the client. I own Neat v4 for Final Cut 7 but that doesn't handle 4K so I am hoping to try it in Resolve 12.5. I am interested mainly in a singer who is in the middle of a frame that covers a WS shot of a 5 piece band.
Couple of questions:

1 - When I tried it in FCP7 last night using v4 I couldn't find the sharpening adjustments so I went back to an earlier version. How do I open them in v4?

2. Assuming I find them, do I understand the demo rules correctly that I can use the demo in 4K but it will add a watermark, and only clean/sharpen a portion of the image?

- How large a portion is that and can I position it where I want ?

That could work for me as a test.

3. Do you have any advice as to how to proceed with the sharpening tools. I am interested above all in the singers face face:

- I'm guessing I should always enable avoid over-sharpening.

- Should I start with luminance only and fine detail and keep increasing that slider only to maximum before trying the medium or low, or should I try adding some med or low much earlier?

- In what situation should I try adding chrominance sharpening in addition to luminance?

- is edge smoothing something that might be useful?

Thanks for your help. I love Neat video but it is a complicated tool .

Lenny Levy

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2016 12:58 pm
by NVTeam
Leonard wrote:I'm wanting to test whether some 4K footage that was shot a little soft ( mixed the focus mark) can be saved by Neat which I can then recommend to the client. I own Neat v4 for Final Cut 7 but that doesn't handle 4K
FCPX or Motion5 should be able to handle it with Neat Video v4 Pro plug-in that you currently have.
Leonard wrote:1 - When I tried it in FCP7 last night using v4 I couldn't find the sharpening adjustments so I went back to an earlier version. How do I open them in v4?
Please switch Neat Video to Advanced mode (menu Tools).
Leonard wrote:2. Assuming I find them, do I understand the demo rules correctly that I can use the demo in 4K but it will add a watermark, and only clean/sharpen a portion of the image?
Yes, that is correct. It is limited to 1280x720 area.
Leonard wrote:3. Do you have any advice as to how to proceed with the sharpening tools. I am interested above all in the singers face face:

- I'm guessing I should always enable avoid over-sharpening.

- Should I start with luminance only and fine detail and keep increasing that slider only to maximum before trying the medium or low, or should I try adding some med or low much earlier?

- In what situation should I try adding chrominance sharpening in addition to luminance?

- is edge smoothing something that might be useful?
I recommend to sharpen the luminance channel in the first place and start adjusting from high to mid and then low while watching preview. Avoiding over-sharpening is useful. I would not involve other features, at least in the beginning.

Thank you,
Vlad

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2016 12:59 pm
by Leonard
Couple more questions:
We shot in UHD but are finishing in HD . Should we apply Neat in UHD then downrez to HD or Downrez first?

Similarly if we want to push in on the UHD for a closer shot should we first do that to obtain an HD image then apply Neat or apply Neat in UHD , push-in in UHD , then downrez to HD?

Thanks again

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2016 1:14 pm
by NVTeam
Leonard wrote:We shot in UHD but are finishing in HD . Should we apply Neat in UHD then downrez to HD or Downrez first?
Applying noise reduction to UHD will be slower than to HD. Otherwise, it should probably be not much different in the end results.
Leonard wrote:Similarly if we want to push in on the UHD for a closer shot should we first do that to obtain an HD image then apply Neat or apply Neat in UHD , push-in in UHD , then downrez to HD?
I would pre-denoise the original UHD clip in a separate ad-hoc project to produce a new clean UHD clip, which I would then use in the main project to do all types of things with it, and that would already not require Neat Video.

Vlad

Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2016 2:12 am
by Leonard
Hope I'm not driving you nuts with endless questions Vlad. but here goes.

In this case I'm not using Neat for noise reduction per see. The footage is quite clean. I have this idea however that Neat's sharpening tools might be the best around so I'm only seeking to try to salvage this out of focus shooting. (not mine btw).

Is using Neat for this purpose only wise , or are there better tools for that purpose?

Does that fact effect any of the other advice you've given me so far?

Also since I'm only interested in sharpening, how important is the quality of the noise profile I build in Neat. Will those parameters affect the sharpening a great deal?

Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2016 2:41 am
by Leonard
Should've mentioned that my other choice for sharpening would probably be the unsharp mask. Pros & cos vs Neat?

Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2016 8:48 am
by NVTeam
Neat Video offers more flexibility, for example, you can separately sharpen small, medium and larger details.

I recommend to try both methods to see which one is better in different situations.

Vlad

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2016 6:44 am
by Leonard
Vlad,
Well I spent the better part of the day just learning how to get Resolve to work today but I was finally able to download Pro res HD files from the UHD original that punched in 50% and 100% from the original shot.
I put the in Final Cut 7 and applied Neat video.

I did find the sharpening tools in V4 but it crashed the computer so I went back to V3 and that worked fine. The crash said Neat needed more memory but I noticed on your website that it could be a limitation of my computer so I just went to v3. Is there a way to increase memory allotment for v4 ?

The quality of the sharpening is way way better than anything I could get using other sharpening tools. For the full sized shot it looked quite useable and even for the 50% punch-in it looked useable to me at least on my 24" Apple monitor. I used only the fine frequency all the way up to 250% with conservative turned off.
At 100% push in I was pressing my luck and added about 85% medium frequency. Maybe useable in a pinch though not for long. I'll try more medium in another pass.

I would like to try it in Resolve at UHD but the v4 demo just froze up. However since v4 didn't work even in HD in FCP I figure that may again just be a limitation of my computer or how much memory is allocated. Can I fix this with memory allocation or can I get a demo version of v3 for Mac OFX?

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2016 8:13 am
by NVTeam
Regarding memory issues in FCP7, I recommend to try the workaround described in our webpage:
FCP 7 and FCP 6: these 32-bit versions of FCP often experience memory-related problems caused by the general limitation of the 32-bit achitecture. If you receive an error message where Neat Video complains about not being able to receive a memory block from the host application or from OSX, please try the following workaround. Restart FCP and go to its menu Preferences >System Settings >Memory & Cache >Application. By default, the amount of memory there is set to 100%. Try reducing the amount to 60-70% and even further to 30-50%. Then restart FCP and try to use Neat Video again.
As for Resolve and UHD, such a combination requires quite lot from the hardware to be usable. For example, it requires at least 8GB of video RAM (an official requirement of Resolve itself). Does your computer satisfy that requirement?

Please also note that v3 vs v4 will likely not make much difference regarding that specific situation, but if you want to try v3 Demo, please contact support [at] neatvideo.com

Thank you,
Vlad

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2016 5:30 pm
by Leonard
Vlad,
Unless I'm mistaken 4G RAM is the requirement for Resolve 12 but there's no doubt that more is better. So I'm not sure if the problem for my use was v4 of Neat or the power hungriness of Resolve. In any case I would like to give the demo version of v3 a shot so I will contact Support.

One thing I was still a bit unclear about from you was whether sharpening would be more effective if we first applied in UHD, then made a separate UHD clip to use for push-in to make new HD clips,
or whether we should take our existing UHD , push-in to HD for a new clip and applied Neat sharpening at that point.

On the one hand you said that denoising would be equally effect if we did it on the UHD or HD level, but you also suggested denoising in UHD before punching in to make HD sub masters.

Would this be the same for sharpening?

Clearly applying Neat to UHD will be much slower, but quality is essential here.

Again thanks so much for your help and for making a product that looks like will savage our ass.

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2016 6:36 pm
by NVTeam
The official configuration guide of Resolve 12 suggests the minimum of 8GB VRAM to work with 4k video without limitations. 4GB is for fullHD, as far as I remember.

Regarding sharpening, I suggest to apply in different scenarios to find which way it works better in your particular workflow.

Generally, sharpening is more resolution-dependent than noise reduction in Neat Video, so if you want to get the best results I recommend to try different ways and select one that looks best to you. If you do this on a short test clip, you can quickly get the results and then use the preferred method.

Thank you,
Vlad

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2016 11:21 pm
by Leonard
Tried neat v3 in Motion 5 on a 4K clip and it crashed so you may be right about the problem. Nevertheless I did email support to get v3 demos for Premiere and OFX.