Improving this kind of video (low light, trv900 18dB gain, club setting)

[wiseleo]

Hi everyone,

I am looking for the best workflow to improve this video. Commercial solutions are OK.

The original source is miniDV from TRV900. This is rendered from Vegas into MainConcept MPEG-2 with no audio and video settings on "Best". Uncompressed video is about 400Mb for 10sec.

http://www.mobitivity.com/dance5-10sec.mpg is the URL (it's an 8Mb file, 10 seconds should be plenty of frames)

Neatvideo gives me nice performance of about 0.71fps on my system. It would be nice to know what would be the ideal settings for it as well so as to save on lots of trial and error .

It's ironic how much computing power I need simply because I choose to film without videolights.

In the future I probably won't let the camera go to +18dB gain, but this was a test shoot.

Thank you VERY much.

Leonid

[Soopafresh]

You can run an Avisynth function on it called TemporalDegrain. It'll reduce the noise quite a bit. Not terribly easy to invoke, however.

Example:

tdegrain.avi


NeatVideo is a really good denoiser, however. It'll take some trial and error - they all do. And it's probably the easiest one out there.

[2Bdecided]

I wouldn't worry too much about the noise.

I'd be far more concerned about the the blocking in the middle of the mpeg clip you've posted. See frame 107 onwards.

Either the MPEG encoder went mad, or your original DV tape is damaged / has drop outs. Try re-capturing, cleaning heads etc.

Cheers,
David.

[wiseleo]

Thank you Soopa and David.

Soopa - yeah I was hoping to tap into the expertise of people who live and breathe this stuff. Can you recommend any particular values off top of your head? I am a unix computer expert, so writing scripts is far from alien concept for me. I am guessing avsp will make my life a little easier.

David - this is still test footage. I am well aware of dropouts. I will clean the unit tonight. I am slightly annoyed at the seller (left channel doesn't record properly), but I record audio externally anyway so it's not that big of a deal once I fix the mics (they are cheap enough). The price was right even if the product was slightly misrepresented. To me in this application noise is in fact a top priority. It's getting mastered to a DVD and I'd prefer the overall movie to be cleaner.

I am basically trying to avoid bringing conspicuously professional equipment that will scare people, hence the choice of TRV900. It looks like a toy, so people are not self-conscious. Although it appears I may need to step up to vx2100 soon.

Any more suggestions? I'd tried doing some levels correction with Vegas with moderate success. I love trial and error, but the fewer errors the better.

[Soopafresh]

I just used the default values of the TemporalDegrain script. The required plugins are in the Avisynth wiki:

http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Temporal_Degrain


The basic script structure would be (better to use your DV source):


DirectShowSource("c:\yourDVfile.avi") #you can use AVisource if you have CedoCida DV codec installed

assumebff()

separatefields()

TemporalDegrain()

Weave()

[racer-x]

Hey Soopafresh,

I saw your clip and was interested in how you did it. I downloaded the TemporalDegrain script along with all the needed DLL's. I keep getting this error and can't quite figure it out:

"MVDegrain2 does not have a named argument "limit" (TemporalDegrain.avs, line 94)

I used the default - TemporalDegrain()

Any ideas?

[Soopafresh]

Hi racer-X. Perhaps it's your version of MVtools. This version works for me. http://avisynth.org.ru/mvtools/mvtools-v1.9.3.zip

[racer-x]

Thanks Soopafresh, That works. I was using version 1.62................

Wow, this is real slow for HDV source, but the results are excellent.

[Soopafresh]

Yeah, the speed is pretty painful. All motion compensated noise reduction is.

[Soopafresh]

Here's a faster version of TemporalDegrain (not as good, but doesn't require a Cray)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=137763

gtdegrain1.avi

[racer-x]

I like that one, it's a lot easier on the CPU.............

Thanks Soopafresh.