Some After Effects questions

questions about practical use of Neat Video, examples of use
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StormMarc
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Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:40 pm

Some After Effects questions

Post by StormMarc »

I'm using Neat Video Pro in AE CS3 and I have a few questions.

1. I am doing some relighting of scenes using 3d lights. I am also using Neat Video on the same clips. Before adding lights I take my noise sample and set-up Neat Video. Is this the right workflow? If I then add lights will that affect the noise sample or noise reduction at all during my final export render?

2. How much sharpening do you recommend we can get away with before messing up the look of the video? In the advanced mode when is it useful to use the mids and lows for the sharpening as opposed to just using the highs.

P.S. I also own Neat Video pro for Vegas and just wanted to recommend that you let people know (perhaps with a dialog box) that you need to have Vegas preview setting on Best/Full when taking your noise sample. The problem is that most people using Vegas (especially in HDV) do not have the preview any higher than Preview best/half during editing for playback reasons. I mentioned this requirement on the Vegas forums recently and it came as a suprise to many Neat video users.

By the way your program is amazing. Great work!

Regards, Marc
NVTeam
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Re: Some After Effects questions

Post by NVTeam »

StormMarc wrote:1. I am doing some relighting of scenes using 3d lights. I am also using Neat Video on the same clips. Before adding lights I take my noise sample and set-up Neat Video. Is this the right workflow?
When using Neat Video in AE, it is very important to make NV the first in the stack of filters applied to the clip. If you keep NV on top of other filters then adding lights after NV is not going to reduce the quality of noise reduction.
StormMarc wrote:2. How much sharpening do you recommend we can get away with before messing up the look of the video? In the advanced mode when is it useful to use the mids and lows for the sharpening as opposed to just using the highs.
All that is task- and clip-specific. There are no good-for-all settings, just like with regular sharpening in AE. You have to try different levels of sharpening to see what makes a specific clip look better. Regarding mids and lows, sharping these frequency components may be useful when you have some mid/lod details that should be more emphasized.
StormMarc wrote:P.S. I also own Neat Video pro for Vegas and just wanted to recommend that you let people know (perhaps with a dialog box) that you need to have Vegas preview setting on Best/Full when taking your noise sample. The problem is that most people using Vegas (especially in HDV) do not have the preview any higher than Preview best/half during editing for playback reasons. I mentioned this requirement on the Vegas forums recently and it came as a suprise to many Neat video users.
Yes, that is absolutely correct, the best/full quality is required to make the setup-time noise analysis work on the same data as that given to NV during render-time. This is how Vegas works, you need to make it show best/full quality preview to ensure the match. Thank you for the suggestion, we will see how we can emphasize that point better.

Kind regards,
Vlad
StormMarc
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Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:40 pm

Post by StormMarc »

Thank you for the response Vlad. The thing is that lights are not effects but are layers in AE and they effect all layers that are set to 3D. So would this be ok or should I render the Neat Video clip 1st and then render seperately the new clip with lights added?

Thanks, Marc
NVTeam
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Post by NVTeam »

I think it should be fine as long as NV is the first in the layer of the clip.

Vlad
StormMarc
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Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:40 pm

Post by StormMarc »

Ok, it seems to work fine. I'll do a test both ways and let you know if I have problems. By the way 16 bit in After Effects is much better than 8 bit in Vegas.
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