redrob wrote:I'm a long-time Neat Video client, with the Sony Vegas Pro plug-in -- still love the results, but like the rest wish processing speed could somehow be enhanced. With my HD footage and quad core (can't use GPU .. seems to be a slower option) it slows to between 1 and 2 frames/sec.
More or less recent Intel CPUs (like i7 3930K working at 4000 MHz) alone achieve 10 frames/sec in Optimize test.
Fast desktop GPUs can help further as well. The best (fastest) cards for NV currently are:
- NVidia GTX 580/680/590/690/780/780Ti/Titan;
- AMD Radeon HD 7950/7970/7990;
- AMD Radeon R9 270X/280X/290X.
You may want to consider upgrading the hardware if that is a possibility at this point.
redrob wrote:(1) Examine the clip properties, if possible, to determine if it's interlaced or progressive footage -- on a mixed-media timeline it's a nuisance to have to manually remember which clip is which source type and set it when adding the filter, and also prone to users choosing the wrong option
I agree with you, it is a nuisance. It is a pity Vegas doesn't tell the plug-in what kind of footage it is, so the plug-in has to ask the user. There is no other way to correctly process the video data.
Other hosts like Adobe Premiere or Apple Final Cut do tell plug-ins about the scan type, so the plug-in knows how to deal with the frames/fields it receives from the host. If Vegas did the same then this part of the setup could be automated just like it is now in those other hosts/plug-ins.
redrob wrote:(2) The NV team has recommended disabling certain noise reduction options to speed up processing (yay!). But this seems somewhat of both an art and a science, and folks like me don't really understand how to disable which options and when it's most appropriate. When simple options are being displayed, perhaps add a slider control that on one end has "highest quality" and the other end "lower quality/faster-renders" -- then, you could behind-the-scenes set the options most appropriate based ont he position of the slider?
That is a good idea. We will consider how this could be done in the future versions. Thank you.
redrob wrote:(3) My typical projects use 4-7 cameras (3-5 different models), and the amount of noise will vary based on how much gain the operator how to apply when shooting in a changing-light environment. I'd love a "first pass" automatic workflow which looks at the amount of noise in a sample-frame from a clip and guestimates the best-matching noise-profile.
If it looks at the noise in a sample frame and it can be sure that what it looks at is actually noise then most of the hard work is already done and there is not much need for the best-matching noise profile at that point. NV could simply use the profile built from the current frame during that initial analysis. Perhaps that newly built profile would be less accurate than a carefully developed profile built in advance but then such kind of matching is never perfect and the errors of a seemingly-matching profile might be even higher than errors of that imperfect newly built one.. It is not really that simple to make it work any more reliable than the way you do it now. Consider your current setting up workflow:
- you open a frame from the clip;
- you click Auto Profile;
- you visually control the area selected by Auto Profile (to make sure it doesn't select something unsuitable like an area with details or a totally blank area without any noise at all);
- you then check preview in the Noise Filter Settings tab to make sure the results are reasonable;
- and then you apply.
When you use this workflow, you know that the profile is good because (1) you built it using this very clip and (2) you saw the actual results in preview.
In contrast when you use any kind of pre-built profile created using another clip, you somehow automatically load that pre-built profile but you do not control all elements above, so in the end you can receive all kind of results.
Therefore, after such automated loading of some pre-built profiles into all instances of the filter in different clips, you still have to visually inspect them all to be sure in the results you are getting. Will this eventually save any time as compared with the regular workflow above?
redrob wrote:I guess I've never really grasped the noise-profile concept and how it needs to change from event to event. For example, if I own an FX7 and XHA1s -- I can't just create an "FX7-low-gain" and "FX7-high-gain" profile (and same for the other camera) which applies in all circumstances, right? When I've tried that in the past, it sometimes results in too many artifacts (or not enough reduction in some areas) of the image.
That illustrates my point in comments to (3) above. If the noise was always the same for FX7 working in "low-gain" mode then just one "FX7-low-gain" profile would be sufficient to cover all clips created in that mode. But is it really the same? Perhaps not, and those bad results you are describing is an indication of that. Perhaps there are some parameters that still change and affect the actual noise levels. Which is why it is necessary to either build a fresh new profile for each clip or to adjust each loaded profile to the current clip in some way.
redrob wrote:Any tips, other than going event-by-event?
Perhaps the only suggestion would be the following. Try to develop a set of profiles for the most common camera modes that you use and develop them using shots of the
Calibration Target.
Then, when it comes to using those profiles, not just load one of them (you still have to manually select the right one of course) but then additionally use the Auto Fine-Tune function in Neat Video. That function adjusts the current profile (and that would be the profile you have just loaded from your pre-built set of profiles) to the current clip, which you have now open in Neat Video. This way, a kind of generic profile would be adapted to that specific clip and will be more accurate and more fitting the noise of that clip.
Hope this helps,
Vlad