Yesterday I was testing how NV handles clips that origin from VHS tapes. The results were overall good. Calibration was a bit tricky, but I return back to this subject later on.
Because I have (so far) only the demo version (VirtualDub plugin), NV removed the noise from the top 2/3 of the 720*576 frame (Yes, I live in Europe!), since the promised size 640x480 was exceeded. This was neat, since 1) I was able to see the results in spite of the fact the demo limitation was exceeded, and 2) I could easily see before/after quality.
This leads directly to the following suggestion: Please add an option to NV that enables to specify that only a part of the frame is affected. There are two advantages: 1) easy before/after comparison and 2) faster rendering in the testing phase.
After implementing this feature, making before/after posts to this forum is very simple: just include a single partially rendered clip. You'll save disk space in storing a single clip instead of two. The rendering time in NV is really an issue, and every attempt to decrease it is in my mind justified. If you render, e.g., a quarter of the frame in the testing phase, your processing speed will be considerable faster. In practice several tests must be made before the final rendering. It is necessary to see how to settings affect to the video, seeing a single frame is just not enough. For example, the rendered preview window seems to be ok, but playing the video reveals that the unfiltered low frequency noise will make the video worse that the original was.
How to implement this? I suggest two ways: 1) the user selects from an additional dialog half frame/quarter frame and the right/left/top/bottom, or 2) the preview window in noise filter settings is reused to specify the region that will be filtered (when the preview window is active, select partial render from the tools dialog).
You could go also further with this: the (non overlapping) frames in variant selector are optionally rendered simutaneously with respective settings. This would enable the user to see a real side-by-side comparison how different settings affect ....
Removing the noise only in a part of the frame
Timo,
Thank you very much for the suggestion. I think it is indeed a good idea and it could be relatively easily implemented. I mean the suggestion to add a kind of "preview mode" to the filter and to process only a part of each frame in this frame. Indeed, we could use the preview selection frame in the main plug-in window in the Noise Filter Settings tab to select the part of the frame to be filtered in this mode. And if there is no selection there then we could use some default area in the center of the frame. We will consider the idea about the Variant Selector as well, but the first variant certainly looks simpler and probably easier to use.
Once again, thank you very much for the suggestion. I am adding this to the wish list.
Kind regards,
Vlad
Thank you very much for the suggestion. I think it is indeed a good idea and it could be relatively easily implemented. I mean the suggestion to add a kind of "preview mode" to the filter and to process only a part of each frame in this frame. Indeed, we could use the preview selection frame in the main plug-in window in the Noise Filter Settings tab to select the part of the frame to be filtered in this mode. And if there is no selection there then we could use some default area in the center of the frame. We will consider the idea about the Variant Selector as well, but the first variant certainly looks simpler and probably easier to use.
Once again, thank you very much for the suggestion. I am adding this to the wish list.
Kind regards,
Vlad
Video preview
My suggestion for partial rendering is related to the need to have some sort of "video preview" in NV. The preview of a single frame is ok, it comes directly from NI. But in which way the user could immediately (or at least easily) see how the filtering affects the video? Currently, one has first to select a range of frames to study (this is done in VirtualDub in my version). Then the clip must be rendered and stored in a file. Finally, the clip must be played with an external player. This could be much easier: the range of the frames to be tested is selected (using Neat Video Configuration dialog), then a video preview is selected from NV. NV builds the filtered frames of the preview region, and then starts to play (and repeat) the clip. Clicking the video with mouse should show the original unfiltered video (or different stored variants could be selected ....).
Since only the region of the preview window is filtered, the time to wait for the video preview is not necessarily too long. 128*128 pixel window could be rendered almost in "real time".
This means that the NV interface should be extended to handle a range of frames. I think this in an important issue that should be considered generally when developing NV. If one compares current NV and NI interfaces, he realizes that NI contains all functionality of NV and much more (except Neat Video Configuration dialog). I think that the situation should be opposite: video processing program should have more functionality than a program processing a single image.
Since you like to hear suggestions for improvements, this was one of them. Nothing to complain. The current version of NV is a good product.
Since only the region of the preview window is filtered, the time to wait for the video preview is not necessarily too long. 128*128 pixel window could be rendered almost in "real time".
This means that the NV interface should be extended to handle a range of frames. I think this in an important issue that should be considered generally when developing NV. If one compares current NV and NI interfaces, he realizes that NI contains all functionality of NV and much more (except Neat Video Configuration dialog). I think that the situation should be opposite: video processing program should have more functionality than a program processing a single image.
Since you like to hear suggestions for improvements, this was one of them. Nothing to complain. The current version of NV is a good product.
Thank you for the additional suggestions about previewing in NV for VirtualDub.
There are three versions of NV now: for VirtualDub, After Effects and Premiere Pro. In After Effects and Premiere Pro, you can easily prepare a preview based on a subsequence of frames in a clip, which means there is no need to add this functionality to NV itself - you can use the existing functionality of these plug-in hosts and that is what other plug-ins do on these hosts as well. That is good. Unfortunately previewing is not the same easy in VirtualDub. You can select and process a subsequence, but evaluating the results may be not immediate. Well, this is a limitation of VirtualDub and I guess it is going to be addressed in its future versions. As it is now, we could facilitate previewing by using the preview mode (rendering only a part of each frame) as we discussed above. This would provide quick and in-place preview directly in VirtualDub.
BTW, such a preview mode can be emulated in After Effects and Premiere Pro right now, thanks to more advanced capabilities of these hosts. They can ask the plug-in to process only a part of the frame by providing an arbitrary mask together with the actual frame data.
Once again, thank you for the suggestions. I think we will be able to improve the previewing in VirtualDub as we discussed a bit earlier in this thread and this would not require big changes.
Thank you,
Vlad
There are three versions of NV now: for VirtualDub, After Effects and Premiere Pro. In After Effects and Premiere Pro, you can easily prepare a preview based on a subsequence of frames in a clip, which means there is no need to add this functionality to NV itself - you can use the existing functionality of these plug-in hosts and that is what other plug-ins do on these hosts as well. That is good. Unfortunately previewing is not the same easy in VirtualDub. You can select and process a subsequence, but evaluating the results may be not immediate. Well, this is a limitation of VirtualDub and I guess it is going to be addressed in its future versions. As it is now, we could facilitate previewing by using the preview mode (rendering only a part of each frame) as we discussed above. This would provide quick and in-place preview directly in VirtualDub.
BTW, such a preview mode can be emulated in After Effects and Premiere Pro right now, thanks to more advanced capabilities of these hosts. They can ask the plug-in to process only a part of the frame by providing an arbitrary mask together with the actual frame data.
Once again, thank you for the suggestions. I think we will be able to improve the previewing in VirtualDub as we discussed a bit earlier in this thread and this would not require big changes.
Thank you,
Vlad