Noisy video?
 

Hi!

I've noticed the video quality is rather noisy, especially in dark light situations but in day light as well.

Is this normal? Is there any way to fix the noise either within the camera's settings or via software?

Here's some of my footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtGl69exopk

Thanks!

If you use your camera in auto exposure mode you will be subject to the cameras brain setting the gain... bad thing. I don't know what kind of camera you are using but I can set mine on auto and then hit the exposure lock and set the exposure myself on the fly with a thumb wheel strategically placed. I also never put the gain on auto... leave it on 0 unless needed.

Most of the noise I have seen comes from low light gain in the camera. Gain should only be used in those low light situations of course but you need to take control of the exposure when using it. Noise shows up quite a bit less when you expose properly for the available light and are using the gain.

Noise is OK if it is consistant in the final product. A two camera shoot edited with only one camera showing noise is kind of bad in my opinion. So what I would do is add noise to the cleaner one to match it up.

Hope this helps.

i'm using an hv20. thanks for the help!

Yes, in low light, it gets awful grainy. One trick is to shoot in 24p. It does better light wise there.

To give yourself most control, switch from Auto to P. Then select either TV to have shutter priority, or AV to have Aperature priority. Then switch on your exposure control. One that is activated, you are locking the exposure. Try not to add to much to the plus side, because that will get you into gain territory.

buy the pro plugin from neatvideo.com for $99. i used it to clean up some extremely noisey and otherwise unuseable 1080p footage (+18dB-gained almost snowy footage). i demo'd the plugin for 5 minutes and was impressed enough to buy it on the spot.

be aware though that all that noise eats up codec bits so even if you theoretically remove all of it, you're left with an effectively lower res image. if you can lower the resolution of the project to 720p or, for the worst video, 480p you'll be fine.

of course you'd only need the plugin for footage you shot before you started shooting with the agc off. :)

at some point i need to shoot some deliberately noisy low-light footage. that plugin almost makes me think i can shoot in the dark.

Roland, this is the achilles heel of HDV land. HDV camcorders are simply more light hungry than standard def units. You are shooting in a low light environment and the suggestions that were already made regarding taking the cam out of 'auto' mode and using more manual control is the best approach.

cool, thanks for the help everyone. i'm new to camcorders, so ya'll have been really helpful!!

I notice it is more noisy on the lcd only, when you get the footage on the computer the video is much cleaner.