Noise, flicker, scratches, and all other types of problems have probably shown up in some of the video you have shot and edited over the years. These are also the types of issues that are notoriously difficult or time consuming to fix and correct.
Visual effects artist Ignace Aleya is here to help. He put together a video about how he corrects for all sorts of video issues in Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. The real tip is that he uses the Neat Video to help get the job done.
Pulling up a sample video that is plagued by noise and flicker, Aleya shows us the best way to clean it up. First, he pulls up the Neat Video effect Reduce Noise v5 plug-in.
It pulls up a new window, and if you want something quick and easy just hit auto profile and adjust the video. It’ll actually do a very good job. Simpler videos will probably be fine with this. This video is a little different.
Opening up the advanced mode, you will want to build a new profile for the clip. To do this, you will want to find an area that doesn’t have much detail and is a large enough area to sample from.
The street and sky are good examples because there isn’t much else going on besides noise. This lets the software build a more accurate method for reducing noise without destroying details.
One way to optimize is to pull up the generic profile first. This somewhat blurs the image and then Aleya pulls up the blue, red, and luma channels.
By looking closely, you can then adjust the noise removal and see how well it cleans up the image. You can even tweak the different frequencies for more optimization and increase the number of frames being sampled.
Moving on, we want to deal with the flicker. Neat Video actually includes a local flicker check function to find the problem areas. Then there is a repeated frames check and a spatial filter tuning section.
It is also here you will find artifact removal, which is useful for dealing with scratches and other issues common with film scans. The most useful for digital video is the edge smoothing, which will help bring back some detail.
Now it is done! Check out the finished image and you should have much-improved images with cleaned up noise and no local flicker. You can still add some extra sharpening and tuning at the end to make sure you are getting the best look you can.
It was impressive how well it works, and if you haven’t dived into plug-ins yet for your video editing this is one of the best ones to get. What are your go-to plug-ins?
[source: Ignace Aleya]
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