Reduce Noise/Grain

S

shoook

Active member
Hey guys I know it has been covered before but all the uncompressed footage from my 170 looks grainy. It doesn't matter whether well lit or not, there is always a noticeable amount of noise. I know the HVXa/170 aren't great at handling noise but its frustrating to watch my uncompressed hd footage looking rather subpar due to this problem.

Alright, enough ranting from me, what can I do to reduce image noise as much as possible in-camera while filming? Some people said that increasing the gain in well lit areas can reduce noise? (as counter intuitive as that sounds)

Also, does Final Cut have any tools to reduce noise?
 
there are plenty of tools you can use, FCP, color, AE. however beware, noise reduction tools don't always work the way u want it to. a lot of the times it will only give u a minor percentage in increase in reduction, but it also tends to soften ur image. put it too extreme and ur footage is too unwatchable. just look around in your effects and tools and u should see stuff for it.
 
I was having issues with camera noise in my DVX100A and after playing around with all of the menu settings I realized what really helped the most was adjusting the shutter speed. Try that. That probably will help a lot. You may even need to turn the shutter off completely. But it's totally up to you. Play around with the shutter speed and see what looks best.
 
In the past I too have struggled with an excessive amount of noise / grain. As far as your comment about increasing the gain is concerned, your right. It's is rather counter intuitive. It's like raising the ISO on a still camera and expecting to less noise. Just not possible, IMO anyway. I've never heard raising the gain in well lit areas would reduce noise.

As of late, I've been working on my own in camera look with two primary goals in mind. One, achieving the flattest image possible and two, doing it with minimal noise. You can see what I've come up with so far here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?276324-Custom-Scene-File-for-HPX170

Any feedback is appreciated.

In term of noise reduction tools, there plenty of options to suit your specific needs. Personally, I handle that type post work in After Effects so if your interested in some possibilities, you can go here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...From-Footage&p=2498851&highlight=#post2498851

Hope this was helpful.

-B
 
To control noise on an HPX170, the two main things to do are to lower the detail level and raise the coring level. Coring is a noise control, the higher you set it the more noise it suppresses. And the higher you set the detail level, the more exaggerated the noise will be.

Try (as an experiment) detail -7, v-detail -7, coring +7, and while you're at it, put it on matrix norm2 and gamma B.Press. And turn the gain to 0dB, and do a proper white balance and black balance. See if that doesn't eliminate all the noise. You may notice the picture is pretty soft at that point, so then you start raising up the detail level and dropping the coring until you find a happy medium of where the noise is low enough and the picture is sharp enough for your tastes.

Or you could do it all in post, use the Neat Video plug-in, it does a magnificent job of eliminating noise.
 
Great advice, Barry! I'm going to try that with my HVX200.

+1 for the Neat Video plug-in. It takes a while to render, but it works miracles.
 
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