Vixen Pro plug-in for Mediastudio, Premiere, Speed Razor?

[Sillyname]

Anybody use this to filter noise and color correct? It was apparently the "must have filter" and then seemed to drop off the face of the earth in 2002. I am currently trying to get a company in Malaysia to ship me a copy but I have my suspicions as to its real availability.

I guess I just need to know if this is worth pursuing. Give me any experiences you have had with it, if any and whether or not you use it still to this day or if you replaced it with something more advanced.

Thanks!

[mumubunnylips]

I remember using Vixen a few years back with Premiere. It's color correction features and auto white and black balance function was truly impressive except for the fact that any degree of correction added a lot of noise into the image.

These days, almost all NLE applications have advanced color correction features built in, so my guess is that Vixen has simply become redundant to many former users as they upgraded to newer versions of their software.

[Sillyname]

I remember using Vixen a few years back with Premiere. It's color correction features and auto white and black balance function was truly impressive except for the fact that any degree of correction added a lot of noise into the image.

These days, almost all NLE applications have advanced color correction features built in, so my guess is that Vixen has simply become redundant to many former users as they upgraded to newer versions of their software.

That can't be. Thanks for replying but how can correcting color cause grain? Are you referring to increasing brightness?

The reason why I was interested in this filter is because of its denoising abilities. Mediastudio is a little weak in that department.

Isn't temporal noise reduction/smoothing just a slow shutter/trail effect?

[mumubunnylips]

Actually, it CAN be. Digital color space is finite. As a result, digital color correction tends to create contouring artifacts when the discrete steps between the original adjacent color or luminence levels are amplified enough to become visible. The result is increased noise, particularly in underexposed scenes which already contain a high level of noise, or in scenes which require a large degree of color correction.

To reduce the noise, a noise reduction filter can be used, but that also reduces the detail in the image, so a noise mask filter is applied to sharpen the edges. All of this needs to be done with a light touch, or your video can start to look like mud.

The version of Vixen I remember using did not have all these tools, but that was a few years back and I would guess it's been refined. I would suggest you download a demo from http://www.xentrik.co.uk/ and try it for yourself.

[Sillyname]

Actually, it CAN be. Digital color space is finite. As a result, digital color correction tends to create contouring artifacts when the discrete steps between the original adjacent color or luminence levels are amplified enough to become visible. The result is increased noise, particularly in underexposed scenes which already contain a high level of noise, or in scenes which require a large degree of color correction.

To reduce the noise, a noise reduction filter can be used, but that also reduces the detail in the image, so a noise mask filter is applied to sharpen the edges. All of this needs to be done with a light touch, or your video can start to look like mud.

The version of Vixen I remember using did not have all these tools, but that was a few years back and I would guess it's been refined. I would suggest you download a demo from http://www.xentrik.co.uk/ and try it for yourself.

I downloaded the demo several weeks ago. Its trial has expired, even though I just downloaded it. I contacted xentrik and they said they were working on a new registration process. I've been waiting ever since. Seems like since Speed Razor took a nosedive, Xentrik has been sort of a ghostown.