A couple of suggestions to make using NV less cumbersome

suggest a way to improve Neat Video
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rimage
Posts: 33
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:44 pm

A couple of suggestions to make using NV less cumbersome

Post by rimage »

I've been playing with NV for a few days within Virtualdub. A couple of observations.

There's a big disparity between what the preview shows and what the effect on the video actually ends up being. I find that the effect on the video is actually more pronounced than what the preview window shows. I have to actually go back to the VirtualDub preview pane to see what the image actually looks like - the NV preview window doesn't seem to be a particularly useful tool.

It would be a big help if there was a quicker way to go to the Noise Filter Settings Tab without having to click the Configure button on the Configuration applet, then having to click on the Noise Filter Settings Tab. Gets to be a chore as I'm fine-tuning the Noise Filter Settings to find the right balance between noise reduction and retention of detail. Being able to toggle back and forth more quickly would be great. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that I can't rely on the Noise Filter preview window as outlined above.

I find I'm able to get great results but eliminating the above annoyances would be great.
Zach
Posts: 38
Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2013 12:37 pm

Post by Zach »

The only way I could see to improve that, since you have to open the filters tab in Vdub, and then select NV, would be to just get rid of that initial dialogue box, and put everything into a tabbed main window that opens from the filter selection box.

Having it remember the last tab you had opened and returning to it would also be a good choice..

Personally, I thought it would be neat if we had a scanning mode, where it could scan either the entire clip, or jump through it at specified frame intervals, to look for flat/featureless areas to build and tweak a noise profile automatically. It would at least give you a much richer sample base to work from when applying your own fine tweaks, no ?
rimage
Posts: 33
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:44 pm

Post by rimage »

Zach wrote:The only way I could see to improve that, since you have to open the filters tab in Vdub, and then select NV, would be to just get rid of that initial dialogue box, and put everything into a tabbed main window that opens from the filter selection box. Having it remember the last tab you had opened and returning to it would also be a good choice..
In Vdub you can go to filters with Ctrl-F. What I would envision would be after then double clicking on the filter in the Vdub filter list and bringing up the intial NV configuration applet if you didn't want one of the options on that applet, in addition to the "Configure" button have a "go to the last tab used" button and also have the option to R-click on the Configuration applet for a menu "Device Noise Profile", "Noise Filter Settings" - would be a lot more convenient - anything to facilitate quick access for a task you do over and over. Of course if the preview window accurately reflected the results it would cut down on much of the need to go back and forth.
Personally, I thought it would be neat if we had a scanning mode, where it could scan either the entire clip, or jump through it at specified frame intervals, to look for flat/featureless areas to build and tweak a noise profile automatically. It would at least give you a much richer sample base to work from when applying your own fine tweaks, no ?
I'll have to defer to your experience on that since I'm just getting into the details of the in's and out's of building an optimal profile. I find I'm getting pretty decent results not even really knowing how to optimally tweak things.
Zach
Posts: 38
Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2013 12:37 pm

Post by Zach »

Well its not rocket science, exactly.

The key to building a good profile is time and patience. In my case it becomes a cumbersome job because I tend to work with Episodic content (mostly Anime) like TV series and I am working on multiple files in one go.

So its kind of a time sink to have to manually build and tweak every profile, especially because I try to be thorough and constantly scrub back and forth over the entire clip looking for new places to sample from. I guess technically I could apply the "same capture device" logic and build a single profile for one series.. But I don't like to take chances, and production values can change with each episode as well.

But even when working with movies it can become a pain, especially when you are trying to build a good profile for grain reduction. I usually don't have a lot of actual "noise" in my clips as they are commercial Bluray discs, I just like to take out some of the grain because it can clean the image a little, but more importantly can drastically reduce file size.

So from my point of view having a scanning mode, would be cool. If only to build and establish a high quality baseline to tweak from.
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