Does anyone else use QTGMC for noise removal?

[hello_hello]

This is mainly an "out of curiosity" question.

I've never been one for using much noise filtering because of the never ending noise removal/detail retention battle, so I haven't played around with many noise filters. Recently though, I found myself unable to avoid it, so I tried TTempSmooth, FFT3DFilter and fluxsmooth, mainly using their default settings, but also trying any "recommended" settings I found amongst each filter's instructions. Once I became bored with being unhappy with the results, I then tried using QTGMC in progressive mode instead. What a difference.

I didn't enable QTGMC's noise filtering. As a result of doing it's thing, QTGMC does a good job of removing noise without it... and while maybe it doesn't remove as much noise that way, it stabilises what it doesn't remove... so for example if there's any grain left behind it no longer "dances" (for want of a better description) so it doesn't seem to be anywhere near as much like "noise".
I used QTGMC in single threaded mode and a faster than default preset because the default was too slow for HD video, but the fast preset still did a very good job.

QTGMC(InputType=1, Preset="fast")

I tested the above on a few different sections of noisy video (dark scenes and light scenes etc) and on scenes with a huge amount of noise, I thought the fast QTGMC preset still left the other noise filters for dead, especially using their default settings. It did a much better job (maybe I'm yet to discover the magic settings for those noise filters which work well), it removed more noise, if anything it sharpened the picture a tiny bit as opposed to the noise filters blurring it, it didn't seem to slow encoding speed any further (if it did it was only by 1 or 2 frames per second) and most importantly I thought the video which QTGMC processed looked much better than the standard noise filters every time. Not "pause on identical frames and try to spot the differences" better, but noticeably better at normal playback speed.

FFT3DFilter's default settings allowed x264 to compress the video the most, but it also to blurred the picture too much for my liking while still not removing more noise than QTGMC. I thought TTempSmooth's default settings did a better job than FFT3DFilter's, but I suspect that's mainly because it removed less noise and therefore didn't cause any noticable blurring, but it still didn't come close to QTGMC. Much of the time I wasn't sure fluxsmooth was removing anything.... it's default settings don't seem to remove a huge amount of noise.

So if I'm going to continue using noise filtering from time to time am I missing some noise filtering obviousness, or are the other noise filters I should try? Would using QTGMC instead be considered a little odd? Has anyone else used it for noise filtering and if so, what did you think of the result?

[deadrats]

years ago Lord Smurf pointed me in the direction of Neat Video, and while it's not free, it's definitely the best noise removing filter currently available.

with regards to QTGMC, i may be mistaken but isn't that primarily for de-interlacing, i think it's noise removal and sharpening functions are secondary.

another very good high quality noise remover is the one found in tmpg video mastering works, not the regular one but the high precision one, it's quite good and it's gpu accelerated (as is Neat Video).

but again, you're paying good cash for both those options.

maybe jagabo has a avisynth script up his sleeve that will do a pretty good job.

here's another idea, have you thought about using x264's built in noise removing functionality, basically cranking up the noise filtering to say 100, but also cranking up psy-rod and psy-trellis to try and compensate, maybe crank up mb-tree and aq as well?

[hello_hello]

Yeah I guess QTGMC is primarily for de-interlacing, but it effectively removes noise as part of that process, and it has a progressive mode..... so I thought why not try progressive mode to see if it removes noise as de-interlaced mode does. I've tried enabling QTGMC's noise removal a few times (just using one of the EZDenoise presets) and while once again it did remove more noise, along with that it blurs more too. In my opinion QTGMC usually removes enough noise doing it's thing without using a noise filter too.

Maybe tomorrow I'll run some sample encodes again and post them here because I was fairly impressed.... I don't think anyone would look at video filtered with FFT3DFilter or TTempSmooth's default settings and not immediately see the difference between those and QTGMC. It surprised me (heading towards "blew me away") how well it worked, which is why I wondered if anyone else has been using QTGMC for noise removal.

To be honest I'm not keen enough to pay for noise removal... up until now I've barely used it.... the video I was encoding the other day was exceptionally noisy though so I thought I should make an effort.

I can't say I've ever considered the possibility of contemplating using x264's noise filter. It hadn't occurred to me. I might test drive it tomorrow if I run those sample encodes again.

Cheers.