Denoise and Firstlight with FCP: best practices?

[Joe Bailey Jr.]

When working with low light documentary footage, say, shot on a 7d, and wanting to use a denoise filter, does one need to denoise first, then round trip back to ReMaster, before Color correcting in First Light, or is the order irrelevant, since First Light is a passive metadata CC?

More precisely:
1. What is the best denoise filter working within FCP?
2. Should it be applied to:
a. The raw mov file before remaster (doubtful--4:2:0 color space), or
b. A Remastered CF 4:2:2
3. After denoise, what is the best practice for First Light CC:
a. Correcting away, without replacing or roundtriping any files
b. Importing a new XML from FCP after the denoise render

My apologies if I'm being obtuse or ignorant in his question, no experience really with filters and much post production beyond basic edits, and not totally clear on how First Light interacts with the FCP workflow. I'll bet it's a lot easier than I'm making it sound here; if someone can clearly lay it out a response I'd be much obliged. Thanks.

[David Newman]

Depends on the noise.

Color correction tends to amplify some noise regions and suppress other. To denoise after you are removed the noise that is visually impacting the look your after and can then control than in the denoise stage. However if the noise is disrupting color correction you might consider doing it first. Random noise generally is not a bad thing for color correction, so I favor doing a denoise last.

[Joe Bailey Jr.]

Thanks so much, David. If anyone else has a read on this, please fire away.