Blackmagic Forum

Just wanted to let people know that the noise eduction on Resolve is as good, if not better than Neat Video.
I shot a short film, and had an incredible amount of noise, because of low light issues.
While editing it, I used the Resolve NR and pushed it quite hard.
Actually, very hard.
I had a friend do noise cleanup before they color corrected it, using Neat Video.
Waste of time.

Resolve actually did a better job, IMO.

The new Enhanced mode really is very good -- but it takes a lot of resources. It's very slow, but not quite as slow as Neat Video.

Note you can often retain detail and not lose it at the expense of noise by playing with the C-only / Y-only modes, which helps quite a bit with SNR.

Marc Wielage wrote:
Note you can often retail detail and not lose it at the expense of noise by playing with the C-only / Y-only modes, which helps quite a bit with SNR.

Yes, I read your other posts about that.

Henchman wrote:the nosie reduction on Resolve is as food

Say what now?

Jim Simon wrote:

Henchman wrote:the nosie reduction on Resolve is as food

Say what now?

Hahahaha.
Fixed.

Henchman wrote:

Jim Simon wrote:

Henchman wrote:the nosie reduction on Resolve is as food

Say what now?

Hahahaha.
Fixed.

Not entirely

Henchman wrote:Yes, I read your other posts about that. I had a friend do noise cleanup before they color corrected it, using Neat Video. Waste of time.

You have to really, really tweak Neat Video in order to get the most out of it. When I use it, I do it on a scene-by-scene basis, basically coming up with 3 or 4 different settings, all the way from mild to extreme. You can mix the NR and change the mix with the original material (similar to Global Blend with Resolve OFX) to knock down the effect. There are far more parameters involved with Neat than there are with TNR/SNR, so it does take some time to figure out the settings -- I find the automatic controls are much too intense.

It is possible to use the A/B control to determine what SNR and TNR are filtering out, and often that's a good way to determine how far is too far. You can make an argument that a little Sharpening (like Y only) can help after NR in some cases, but the whole process is very, very fiddly.

If you want the best results, that’s true for the built-in NR just the same. Both need careful per scene tweaking and finally it’s depending on the scene which one is better. At least that’s my experience. NeatVideo has the advantage of noise sampling, which helps to some degree with compressed noise patterns. As long as you stick to uncompressed or low compression, Resolve’s NR is just as good.

I learned a lot with Neat, years ago, and wanted to go the deeper I could into it, to really master its strength once for always...
The fact is I found it quite impossible.
Actually its huge assets are also what can quickly become a burden : even if you found a rock solid WF, it is very hard not to try "just a tiny altered tweak of a noise sample" to see what difference may results on the image... And you can twek the way you keep the sample, you can tweak the way it's taken into account one step further etc...
It is somehow never finished, because another option test can pop up in your mind and torture you until you finally give up and give it a test. And you surely all know that test with Neat Video can last forever ...
In Resolve, it's more focused on quick answers but also efficiency. Less options doesn't mean you give up quality.
In the end, I can understand the OP, especially the "waste of time" part : I don't agree, but I can understand it. I'm indeed really not sure anymore that you cannot be very close to Neat's result with Resolve's built-in NR in barely every situations...