Video Editors: Noise, Contrast and Colors

[Mike Hollingshead]

Does anyone know of any video editing aps that work well at getting rid of video noise and work well with adjusting color saturation or contrast? I have Pinnacle 8 and really don't care for what it does with saturation or contrast as it seems to make the video worse in the noise department. That and it has no noise adjustment options.

I'm wondering if like Adobe premiere has this and how well it works. I'm trying to not buy a vid cam this year and would love to see how much better I can get my minidv footage from it. The mpeg encoder I had a trial of had a noise reduction function that worked excellent on anything other than quick pans. I guess I assume Adobe Premiere can do as good of job before the long encoding parts. I know it works with saturation and whatnot too but wasn't sure if it too adds to unwanted things like noise once you touch those settings.

Any thoughts/experience with anything that works well at all this?

Thanks for any info.

 

[David Drummond]

Premier does have these ability Mike and is highly adjustable! I would say, give the trial version of it a try!

 

[fplowman]

I am unsure of why nobody around here wants to accept Vegas? Adobe premier is a conglomerated cluster#$% of programs bought out and mish mashed into one.

I have never once had Vegas crash. its ease and simplicity of use for a higher end app is second to none. Its audio and video set of tools is unsurpaased by any other ( Sonic Foundry is un arguably the best audio editing software available) *note: now Sony.

Try them both Mike and use the one you like best.

When i go to buy something very expensive i use the internet and search for user reviews of the product.

Just like Stormtrack is the premier site for chasers there are forums for video production as well. Go there and read the reviews of each product and decide from there. Then if still in doubt use them both and decide further wich you like best..

My 2c

 

[David Drummond]

I am unsure of why nobody around here wants to accept Vegas? Adobe premier is a conglomerated cluster#$% of programs bought out and mish mashed into one.

Vegas is cool Fred. I have just been using Premier so long I am comfortable with it. Higher end video editing programs are expensive and often have a pretty steep learning curve for anything more than the basic stuff. Thus the reason I haven't taken the time to dive into Vegas.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Cool, so I take they both do have noise reduction tools? It will likely come down to cost more than anything between the two. I thought I saw adobe premiere pro 1.5 for $250 somewhere.

 

[David Drummond]

Cool, so I take they both do have noise reduction tools? It will likely come down to cost more than anything between the two. I thought I saw adobe premiere pro 1.5 for $250 somewhere.

If you remember that music video I did Mike, some of the nighttime footage was fairly grainy. I was able to probably get about 50% of the grain out of that with Premier Pro. Fred could tell you more about how Vegas works, I think he uses it exclusively.

 

[Tony Laubach]

David,

I would be curious to know how you can increase constrast and rid of noise in Premiere!

Thanks!

 

[fplowman]

I am unsure of why nobody around here wants to accept Vegas? Adobe premier is a conglomerated cluster#$% of programs bought out and mish mashed into one.

Vegas is cool Fred. I have just been using Premier so long I am comfortable with it. Higher end video editing programs are expensive and often have a pretty steep learning curve for anything more than the basic stuff. Thus the reason I haven't taken the time to dive into Vegas.

Im sorry David when i re read that it looks like i was being hateful maybe towards you. i certainly didnt mean it that way.

Vegas has many pluses:

All of the tools were built from the ground up and they arent a series of programs bought from other companies and pieced together like Premier Pro is.

How many times have the premier users here had their programs lock up on them at critical points? Was there any info lost?

Vegas started off as a sound tool. sound is moreso important to our videos than the video yourself. dont believe me? Plop in a dvd and turn the volume down all the way and see how long you can stand to watch it.

Being able to control sound including Dolby surround is a BIG plus in my book. Vegas has been doing this since its inception. Adobe I believe recieved this in its pro release with audition which is a 3rd party buy out addon.

Vegas is a simplier layout and learnign curve. By no means is it easy. But it is easier to learn than premier. If i were using premier already. i dont see alot of reason to swithc because it will do everything you need to put out quality professional video. Learning curves in our busy lives has no time for. That is certainly appreciated.

Vegas is an all in one integrated process flow.. down to the DVD burning. it flows right into the DVD burning app after processing in editing.

I have been using it now for about 3 years and i must say i have not tapped into all of its tools as it has a full plate of features. I will follow up tonight after I leave work with forums that talk more about this and also forums with Final cut, Premier, Vegas and Avid threads so that you can see what people are saying about each application. This is where I believe decisions are made.

Ill signb in later with mor einfo as I have people needing their loans closed.. lol (My day job)

 

[Sheila_Ward]

David,

I would be curious to know how you can increase constrast and rid of noise in Premiere!

Thanks!

Don't want to speak for David, but you can apply these from the Effects section. Under "Video Effects -> Adjust" You will see options to to adjust the color, brightness and contrast, etc. and under "Video Effects -> Noise" there is a median option.

You apply these to your clip, then adjust with the Effect Controls section.

David may have a different way of doing things and I'm sure he will chime in.

I think downloading the trial versions is the best way to go and determine which one handles the features that are important to you the best.

I have tried Vegas and it is very good IMO. But I already had the money invested in Premiere, so I'm sticking with it for now.

Mike, you might check into Premiere Elements too. It's the scaled down Premiere Pro (like Photoshop Elements). I don't know if it would have the ability to handle noise or color changes , but it's much cheaper if it has all the functions you need.

 

[David Drummond]

Nope, that's the way I do it. And Fred is correct in that Dolby Digital encoding is in there, but you can only use it a couple of times and then you have to pay more to use it.

 

[jaybarnsmith]

Im not sure exactly what you want to do so I may be way off base here. There are lots of free tools that can reduce noise and clean up the video in other ways and most of these came from the need to clean up TV and DVD rips.

If you have mpeg video look into QuEnc and AVISynth. AVISynth has a large variety of filters that do just about everything. These tend to be a lot less user friendly which is the downside, on the upside they are free.

Check out http://www.doom9.org the guides and the forums in specific. Lots of good information on using AVISynth and QuEnc. Ive used both and can provide some help if needed but I'd check the doom9 forums first as im by no means an expert.

 

[Greg Campbell]

A friend uses Neatimage, the still-image noise reducer, run in batch mode to clean up video files. Break the video down into a series of still images, fire up NI, and check back next morning. Re-integrate the frames into a video, and dub the audio back in.

He says that the process is a PITA, but that it produces good results.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Well I purchased Premiere Pro 1.5 and an entirely new computer later I have it working. If you get this program make sure your processor supports SSE. If it doesn't this program isn't going to work on your computer. I think everything Pentium 3 or later has it. My 900 mhz amd didn't so I bought a new pc.

I'm replying to this to mention that and about the noise reduction. I've found this noise filter to be a complete joke on this application. It has a slider for settings of 1-10 in whole number stops. 2 and the image gets very 'plasticy' looking from too much softening. 1 and I swear to got it added more 'noise' to my video. It wasn't the same kind of noise but instead I had more digital artifacts in the video. I laughed and let that idea go.

So that brought me back to the tmpg mpeg encoder, which they again have a new version out and a new trial ap I can use on my pc. I got the same problems as the last go around when trying to use the noise reduction filters on it. Any panning scenes of quick movements and areas would hop/bounce/stutter as they move by. After some reading and messing around I think I have a decent setting on there. You can set the noise filter by spatial or temporal. I think it is the temporal adjustment causing most of this. What I ended up using is a small adjustment of a 5 setting(on the 1-100 scale) on spacial and left temporal completely off. This seems to be 'just right' for removing the noise, not losing the detail, and not getting as much of the hop(which likely is just a part of encoding, when you aren't using a multi-thousand dollar ap and shooting clouds). I think any video but video of clouds and panning and you can get away with some low bit rates and fit a lot on a dvd. I try to not go over 1hr and 40 minutes now on a standard dvd. Just some thoughts. I think in reading it sounds like there is an ap called avisynth or something that is great at noise removal before encoding(avi to avi). Premiere is not. TMPG encoding to mpeg certainly does a fair job, and I'm picky. I love all the things you can do with Premiere and am quite happy I got it. The noise removal just wasn't what I was hoping for I guess.

 

[JR Hehnly]

Mike, try this denoise filter plugin for Premiere. It has a lot more features than what you get from Adobe:
http://www.alparysoft.com/products.php?item=16