NeatVideo for Vegas or ???

[fredfillis]

I've been messing around with NeatVideo demo for virtualdub and some captures from a Hi8 source via ADVC300.

Now, the Neatvideo plugin is terribly slow (20 minutes to process a 55 second DV-AVI).

Normally I use Vegas Movie Studio (V7.0) as my NLE and use VirtualDub to handle some grunt work. NeatVideo is now available for Vegas / VMS.

So, if I wanted to buy NeatVideo, should I buy the vegas version or the vdub version? Any difference? Or is there a freeware way of achieving almost the same level of noise reduction?

[guns1inger]

PeachSmoother and Convolution3D are both capable of very good noise reduction and image cleanup, and both are substantially faster than NeatVideo. For most clean up work they are a viable alternative.

You will have to learn some basic avisynth scripting, however there are plenty of posts in the restoration forums that discuss these plugins and how to get the best out of them.

Another thing to look at is WAX2 from Debugmode. It can run as a Vegas plugin, and allows you to load some virtualdub filters and use them on the Vegas timeline. If you can run the virtualdub version of NeatVideo this way then you can have the best of both worlds.

FWIW, I tried NeatVideo on a 2 hour 5 min VHS capture, and was looking at days to run. The same process using PeachSmoother and a few other filters (it needed colour adjustments etc as well) ran in under 12 hours, and looked just as good. NeatVideo is good, but not perfect - if the settings are too extreme it will artifact, just like any other noise reduction plugin - and the speed is just too slow for large projects for what you do get. Avisynth plugins can give you better than 95% of the result of NeatVideo or better in a much shorter time.

Experiment a little before you decide.

[fredfillis]

Thanks for the tips.

Wax seem pretty good although it appears to not work with Vegas beyond V6.0 although I might just have a play with a standalone install for giggles.

I'm not unfamiliar with scripting although very much a beginner so I'll check out PeachSmoother and Convolution3D. I think I've tried most of the virtualdub possibilities, some work alright. What I want to do is nail down a workflow that works for me when I run across those clips shot indoors in poor lighting.