NeatVideo Pro: Get it 4 Vegas or CS3 AE/Premiere?

Soniclight wrote on 11/15/2013, 5:59 PM


(CS5 Premiere NeatVideo GUI)

I use Vegas 10e but also have CS3 AE that I have so far not used besides snooping around in it (someone here kindly gave me their CS3 since I could never afford any Adobe suites). I had briefly used AI 3.1 eons ago and so it's going to be a bit of a steep learning curve. Same with Premiere -- haven't cracked it open aside from snoop.

The NeatVideo tutorial is done in AE and the interface/GUI is better or sexier IMO than what I've seen via my Vegas/Effects so far. As is the CS5 Premiere one featured in the accompanying screenshot here found online.

But my guess is that all versions have the same amount of parameters.
True/False?

It would be much easier for me to do it in Vegas since that is my core NLE for I can almost edit blindfolded due to 7 years of playing in it. I just don't want to miss out on any parameters, etc. between platform versions. USD$99 is not much for most, but to me it's somewhat of a sizable investment albeit one I know will be very useful. Better get the full-fledged and right NV for the right workflow.

Thanks for your input.

Comments

Soniclight wrote on 11/15/2013, 11:45 PM
Bumpin'...
Soniclight wrote on 11/16/2013, 2:10 AM
Well, figured I'd just register over at the NV forum and hopefully get answers to this over there. So never mind, unless someone still wishes to reply. ~ PK
John_Cline wrote on 11/16/2013, 3:00 AM
You will get the exact same noise reduction performance in Vegas but there is one thing of which to be aware when using NV in Vegas. When rendering, it will delay the video relative to the audio by the number of frames for which you have the temporal filter radius set. (Usually one frame.) There is a work-around which will reduce the quality of the noise reduction slightly. See section 5.7 of the Vegas NV Manual at the link below:

http://www.neatvideo.com/files3/NVSVUG.pdf
Soniclight wrote on 11/16/2013, 9:53 AM
OK, thanks for reply. Your sharing of the User PDF and seeing the screenshots of the parameters answered my question. In terms of the audio slowing render down, saw that somewhere in my research of NV for Vegas so will keep that in mind.

Mission accomplished.
Kimberly wrote on 11/16/2013, 10:37 AM
I was not aware of the audio delay issue in Vegas! But then I mute my audio and play New Age-y type music so I wouldn't have seen this. This is one of the many reasons this Forum is so valuable -- you learn so much just through osmosis.

Assuming the audio workaround is viable for you in Vegas, if you are most familiar with Vegas, then NeatVideo in Vegas may be your best option. Otherwise you would have to port over your project pieces to the other solution where you are least familiar, apply NeatVideo, port it back . . . just my opinion.
John_Cline wrote on 11/16/2013, 5:39 PM
Just to be clear, having an audio track does not slow down the render in NV, which is what your statement implied. When using NV in Vegas, it offsets the video by one frame so that the processed video ends up one frame behind the audio. Another way to put it is that the audio will then lead the video by one frame. I will typically ungroup the audio from the video and move the audio one frame to the right before an NV render.

The human brain has adapted to hearing an event after seeing it based on the difference between the speed of light and to the much slower speed of sound. We can usually deal with at least a frame or two of audio delay before we notice it. However, hearing the audio before the visual event is extremely noticeable and disconcerting, most humans can detect when the audio is leading the video by less than a frame. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the video delay caused by NV in Vegas and compensate for it, preferably by moving the audio one frame to the right before rendering with NV or the less desirable method of checking the box in the NV plugin that compensates for the delay.
Soniclight wrote on 11/16/2013, 6:00 PM
My (perhaps not very professional) solution to this audio-NV thing is what I did with one of my last projects: In the master-with-everthing-in-it project, I rendered a master video-only file. Then render a master audio-only. Then opened a new "Final" project and render the two together.
vtxrocketeer wrote on 11/16/2013, 6:43 PM
I used to batch de-noise hundreds of events at a time with NV using the max of 5 frames temporal calculation. One event or hundreds, it is a snap in Vegas to nudge the audio by 5 frames relative to the corresponding video. Even a slight mistake in this step, however, is astonishingly conspicuous for the reasons John Cline explained.

Soniclight, your workflow isn't so bad, but for reasons that you might not have intended: assuming a codec with little or no generational loss, editing pre-de-noised (like that term? ;) ) clips does make for smoother timeline performance. On my rig, I can just forget anything remotely close to real-time playback with NV as an active FX.
Soniclight wrote on 11/16/2013, 10:03 PM
vtxrocketeer - As most who know me over the last 7 years I've been here, I'm a "serious amateur 'semi-semi pro'" with an artsy-fartsy ethereal style. Meaning I have so far only done for Web-delivery, and soI don't have to fine tune stuff with scopes and such for broadcast quality as perhaps you and many others here do.
Soniclight wrote on 11/17/2013, 11:29 AM
Well, case closed.
NeatVideo Pro 3.5 for Vegas bought and installed.
smhontz wrote on 11/17/2013, 4:16 PM
John, why do you say "...or the less desirable method of checking the box in the NV plugin"? Seems to me that's pretty easy and that's the way I've always done it - in fact, I have a FX preset with it checked and I just always use that one.

Is there a downside to doing it that way?
John_Cline wrote on 11/18/2013, 4:38 AM
NeatVideo uses two methods for noise reduction; Spatial, where it uses matching the noise sample patterns to reduce the noise on individual frames and Temporal noise reduction where it looks at the current frame, the previous frame and the following frame to see what changes across frames to better determine what's noise and what isn't. Checking the box tells Neat Video to use fewer frames for the Temporal noise reduction function which can reduce the quality of the final render.

Here is what it says from the NeatVideo manual:

"Please note that using a non-zero Radius of N frames will produce a lag of N frames in the filtered video stream and also a delay in the beginning of a filtered clip. These issues are caused by a limitation of the Vegas plug-in architecture and can be generally resolved by Vegas developers who can add the necessary functionality to Vegas itself. Before that is done in Vegas, Neat Video offers a special workaround – the No Lag
Mode option:

Enable the No Lag Mode option (below the Temporal filter box) to make Neat Video use less frames for temporal processing. This may reduce the quality of temporal filtration but will not produce a lag in the rendered clip."