Easy noise reduction trick

[Paolo Ciccone]

HDV is noisy, we know that. The problem becomes worse when you add gain when not necessary. Wait, what's that? Why would I add gain if I don't need it? Simple, the freakin' gain switch flips too darn easily. After reviewing another shot that was supposed to be perfect, and I spotted noise in the dark tones, I realized that the gain switch flipped to the +3db position by mistake.

I had it. This was the last straw. I considered ripping the damn thing off or use the Scott Billups trick: super glue it. I truely believe that it's worth it.
Then I remembered that there is a simpler remedy. Call the menu, go to "SWITCH MODE" and turn gain low, gain medium and gain high to 0.

I know, it's trivial, obvious even, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Turn the damn gain off and you'll have one less thing to worry about. If you really, really need it then it's a snap to switch on but in my case I practically never use it and it caused nothing but grief.

Just turn it OFF! You'll be glad you did.

[David Scattergood]

I watched Miami Vice again recently and had forgotten how noisy that film is (even on smaller screen DVD)!

There have been occasions I've had to pump it up so to speak, but lack of on board/shoe light didn't help there.
I guess for those required dark, atmospheric scenes you should overlight and darken either by the camera settings or in post?

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by David Scattergood

I guess for those required dark, atmospheric scenes you should overlight and darken either by the camera settings or in post?

If you have control of the light that is my preferred method, as long as you preserve the contrast ratio of the scene you can darken it in post, grade it, heck even rotoscope elements of it and do separate color correction and get an excellent result. Many times just playing with Levels will do. If you have AE with Color Finiess then you can really turn the scene colors wildly and in a selective way. At the end of the day your signal will be clearer and you'll have less "dancing pixels".

[David Scattergood]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

If you have control of the light that is my preferred method, as long as you preserve the contrast ratio of the scene you can darken it in post, grade it, heck even rotoscope elements of it and do separate color correction and get an excellent result. Many times just playing with Levels will do. If you have AE with Color Finiess then you can really turn the scene colors wildly and in a selective way. At the end of the day your signal will be clearer and you'll have less "dancing pixels".

Thanks Paulo - I unfortunately do not own AE or Colour at present so rely on FCP and it's inbuilt colour corrections.

"..rotoscope..." - in this context am I reading it correctly in that you could 'paint/animate' part for the scene to either colour or balance the contrast?
As it happens I was looking for rotoscope freeware (seemingly avaiable for the PC but not mac).
But I at least could do with some kind of on board/shoe light. I shot some footage in a restaurant (not planned - just asked at the door if ok to shoot footage of the chefs and the clientele). It was a Japanese resturant and the chefs (cooking 'live' in front of the customers) really performed for the camera...unfortunately it was pretty dark and the gain almost ruined this footage (brightened up in post but those 'dancing pixels' as you say were pratically high as a kite!).

Finding your tru colour 3 scene helpful by the way - cheers for that (be sure of a credit for any shorts I do), it's tough without the necessary high quality monitor to play with the various levels and scene adjustments.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by David Scattergood

Thanks Paulo - I unfortunately do not own AE or Colour at present so rely on FCP and it's inbuilt colour corrections.

You can do good with FCP, it's not as powerful and precise as Color Finesse but it works.

"..rotoscope..." - in this context am I reading it correctly in that you could 'paint/animate' part for the scene to either colour or balance the contrast?

Rotoscoping is the technique to isolate elements of the frame by creating one or more masks and updating them frame by frame to follow the movements and shape changes of the elements that you want to isolate. In the case of color correction you might want to boost the dark tones of a black jacket wore by an actor without boosting the signal so much for the whole image. If you rotoscope the jacket you can then apply the color correction just to that and bring up more detail without washing out the other colors. Of course you should have placed a light to create more details in that area and avoid fixing it in post but then there are situations, like your run-and-gun Japanese cook shot where you don't have the luxury of staging the shot.

For rotoscoping on the Mac, some of the most approachable solutions are the built-in masks in AE, the amazing masking tools of Shake, or the excellent Silhouette Roto plugin which I use continuosly. See http://www.silhouettefx.com/
They are not free but Shake and AE are defintely worth the investment if you plan on compositing your own videos.

Take care.

[David Scattergood]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

You can do good with FCP, it's not as powerful and precise as Color Finesse but it works.



Rotoscoping is the technique to isolate elements of the frame by creating one or more masks and updating them frame by frame to follow the movements and shape changes of the elements that you want to isolate. In the case of color correction you might want to boost the dark tones of a black jacket wore by an actor without boosting the signal so much for the whole image. If you rotoscope the jacket you can then apply the color correction just to that and bring up more detail without washing out the other colors. Of course you should have placed a light to create more details in that area and avoid fixing it in post but then there are situations, like your run-and-gun Japanese cook shot where you don't have the luxury of staging the shot.

For rotoscoping on the Mac, some of the most approachable solutions are the built-in masks in AE, the amazing masking tools of Shake, or the excellent Silhouette Roto plugin which I use continuosly. See http://www.silhouettefx.com/
They are not free but Shake and AE are defintely worth the investment if you plan on compositing your own videos.

Take care.

I understand now cheers Paulo. Would never of thought of using Rotoscope for that.
Aye - Shake & AE will hopefully soon be in investment (and I believe Shake isn't half as expensive as it used to be?).

Many thanks.

[Mark Donnell]

Paolo - I am unfamiliar with these techniques, but then I am not experienced at post-production. I am using Edius Broadcast on a PC - are Shake or other programs you mentioned available for the PC ?

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by David Scattergood

Aye - Shake & AE will hopefully soon be in investment (and I believe Shake isn't half as expensive as it used to be?).

It isn't, in fact that's why I bought my copy last year. I use AfterEffects almost every day and it is by far my default compositing application but Shake is extremely powerful and has been the high-end composing suite of choice for many Hollywood productions. It use to sell for $7000.00 but it's now $499.00, if I remember well. It's a completely different way of compositing than AE, node based instead of timeline/layer-based but it's incredibly powerful. For the price, it's hard to find anything better.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Mark Donnell

are Shake or other programs you mentioned available for the PC ?

Shake is only available for Mac OS and Linux, AfterEffects is completely multiplatform for Mac OS and Windows. The vast majority of AE plugins are also available in both "flavors"

If you are planning in using AE a good source of excellent training is Lynda.com.

[Robert Castiglione]

I shot yesterday in very bright conditions. There were various pressures and each time after a scene I would put the cam on the front seat of the car. EACH TIME I did this, the freakin little gain switch was accidentally activated. I was going crazy not understanding why on earth my scenes were looking blown out my normal settings were not looking as they should. It was only quite late in the day before I realised what was happening.

So, Paolo, this is far from trivial! I was thinking of using some tape over it but I did not even think of your suggestion which is I think an excellent solution and which will effected immediately today. Cheers for the useful tip.

Rob

[Steve Oakley]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

Shake is only available for Mac OS and Linux, AfterEffects is completely multiplatform for Mac OS and Windows. The vast majority of AE plugins are also available in both "flavors"

If you are planning in using AE a good source of excellent training is Lynda.com.

I'm doing all my roto work in combustion. once you get used to having trackers on masks and mask points, per vertex mask feathering, anything less is... less. I also just sprung for monet this week which is just killer. Nothing like a specialized tool for the job.

if you want to learn about AE, get the Meyer's book because its pretty much the AE training bible.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Rob, isn't it funny how something that is supposed to be useful turn into a liability? When it happened I felt like such an idiot. In my case it's every time I take the camera out of the bag.

JVC better change that in future models, that thing is a liability. I bet there that thing has created more ruined shots that people are willing to admit :)
Glad that the trick is useful.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Steve Oakley

I'm doing all my roto work in combustion. once you get used to having trackers on masks and mask points, per vertex mask feathering, anything less is... less.

Oh yes, tracking and 3D tracking. I use SynthEyes for that with output to Shake, Carrara or AfterEffects. Amazing what kind of power we have available today!