On this general topic:

Is there any type of video noise reduction in Vegas to remove say low-light noise from gain?

Also, I use Premiere Pro 1.5.1 a lot for final rendering because I can run many of my Photoshop plugin's like pre-configured highlight/shadow recovery, levels, curves, local contrast enhancement etc. Is there any way to accopmplish these tasks in Vegas?

Duncan

Mike Crash's Denoise filter (based on Vdub) works fairly well.
Mike's page of Vegas plugins

Thanks, I will give it a try. I use his Deshaker prog.

Duncan

Deshaker is actually written by Gunnar Thalin.

Mike's Denoise is very handy and easy to use. However, all noise cleaners, whether spatial (works on one frame at a time) or temporal (works by looking at changes between frames) end up causing artifacts. When you first use them, you'll find yourself cranking the control way up and marveling at the lack of noise. Then, after you've processed a lot of video and made a DVD, and are looking at the result on a big monitor, you'll say, oops. All sorts of things show up that are often worse than the original noise. The one nice thing about noise is that it is usually quite uniform and unchanging, and therefore -- after awhile -- not all that distracting. Just like the audio realm where you get used to the hiss on tape or the crackle on a vinyl record or the hum from a bad mike setup. By contrast, if those artifacts come and go, then they call attention to themselves.

For really top-notch video noise reduction, you need tools far beyond anything that can plug into Vegas. There are dozens and dozens of such tools that plug into both VirtualDub and AVISynth. The ones for AVISynth are amazing. With that product, you can even use motion estimation algorithms to detect how much motion happens between each frame, and use this information to dynamically change how much temporal noise reduction to apply. As you will find if you use Mike Crash's excellent noise reduction plugin, if there is virtually no motion (neither the camera or the subject are moving much), you can crank the noise reduction way up, and everything looks fabulous. However, as soon as things start to move, you get ghosting and many other artifacts. This is not the fault of his plugin, it's just the way those algorithms work.

With AVISynth and a motion estimation plugin preceding the temporal noise reduction, you can tell the noise reducer to go to the max when nothing is moving, and then back off during high motion sequences. There are many more tricks that can be performed.

The key thing to pass along here is to use as little video noise reduction as you can.

I've concluded that, while both audio and video NR are useful tools in some cases, they can both suck the life out of the raw footage. Video NR eliminates all the subtle details in surfaces and textures. Taken to an extreme you get cartoon-like images. Audio NR takes away the subtle room nuance and coloration. Taken to an extreme it sounds like you recorded in an anechoic chamber.

Switching to a VX2000 removed the need for videoNR in the first place (for me). As for audio background noise, I just note that they are "live recordings" and I guess people expect some background noise.

Anyway, that's my current feeling. Just experiment and see what you prefer.

riredale,

I couldn't agree more. The only slight change I'd make is that there are some kinds of noise that can be removed with very little downside. In the video realm, this includes chroma noise which the Mouchard plugin can kill with virtually no detectable artifacts. On the audio side, certain types of 60 (or 50) cycle hum and its harmonics can be reduced quite a lot before things start to sound artificial. Also, the low frequency hum is pretty darned annoying. I also found a few months back (and posted in these forums) that continuous impulse noise, which is how noise from some light dimmers is generated, can be completely removed using the tick and pop noise reduction. This impulse noise reduction also works wonders on records, again with little downside.

Finally, you can use the replace function in SF to get rid of clicks, coughs, and other short transients -- at least during quiet portions of the audio -- without anyone being able to tell.

And audio-wise there's also the FM plugin on the VASST site ($25), which I have used in a DV feature. This can be set up as a toolbar button that inserts a specialized iZotope plugin with many settings, or you can search out 'VASST' in the FX plugin window, and choosing it creates, via a script, tweakable presets of a string of Vegas audio plugins. The scripted presets include NR and Wave Hammer "balanced" against each other, etc. OR, you can apply NR yourself and add it to the FM plugins.