As a filmmaker, either documentary and narrative, there are certain times when you are forced for some reason to shoot with available light and in those situations there are most certainly times when that light is too low for your desired shots. This typically leads to grainy, noisy video. So, what is a shooter to do when they just have to have the shot or the editor isn’t provided a better shot to work with? Use NeatVideo and clean it up! This $100 plugin is worth its weight in gold (or hard drive storage or RED gear or something more valuable than $100) and really can produce stunning results on footage you may consider unusable. It takes render time, of course, to clean up all that noise and grain you wish to eliminate, but the results are well worth it. And, unlike some other solutions I’ve seen in reducing noise, NeatVideo does an amazing job at retaining details and can even sharpen up your video very nicely. Take a look at this sample video I made of two noisy night-time shots (download the original clip from Vimeo to really see the details) and I think you’ll be convinced.
Demo of NeatVideo plugin from Jeremy Wilker on Vimeo.
Note: this is also posted over at MN Dialog