Alexrocks1253 wrote:When doing noise reduction, I set it to the first node. After, I change the frames to 3, the motion estimation type to better, and the motion range based on the scene. For temporal I set chroma to 25 for less chroma noise and 40 when more chroma noise is present. For luminance, I set up to 50 if needed though anywhere above that leads to the noise looking like water flowing, a weird artifact.
I think this is a bad idea, because (generally) the first node directly from the source will either be a Log image, or it'll at least lack the contrast added by the rest of the grade.
I'm with Walter above: there's always a danger in adding
too much noise reduction, where you wind up with a very "plasticky" image lacking in detail, sucking the life out of the image. Remember that there's always a price to pay for noise reduction. Less is more.
I use one of two methods:
1) with Resolve TNR/SNR, I usually will use a node somewhere in the middle of the node tree, so we've already built up a lot more contrast and the levels are reasonable. I generally make different settings on Luma and Chroma for SNR, and I think the Enhanced mode can deliver better results sometimes.
2) when I have the time, I'll render out the entire color-corrected project to a "visually-lossless" format (like ProRes 444XQ) in the delivery resolution, then create a new timeline with one node just for Neat Video. I'll chop up the timeline based on scene content -- day scenes vs. night scenes, interiors vs. exteriors, blown-out shots vs. underexposed shots -- and adjust the Neat Video NR accordingly. I keep at least a half-dozen presets of Neat and usually wind up backing off at least 40% for their versions of SNR/TNR, after using their analysis pass.
In some cases, I'll use a Resolve NR node targeted especially for a single color channel or just the shadows: there are ways to use the Blue-only channel, which (for me anyway) is where a lot of the noise lives in underexposed digital or film. Other cases, rather than use NR per se, I can "flatten" out shadow noise by qualifying a soft key on information below about 20ire, then using SNR Luma only. This at least "softens" the noise in those areas, which can help. Other times, I'll manually desaturate the shadows, which is great if they're contaminated with color noise. Every situation is different and requires some judgement and experimentation.