NR 1 NIGHTMARE...is there a fix?
 

I shot a wedding yesterday(for another comnpany) with my H1. The ceremony footage was fine, but the 2 hour reception (speeches, songs, cake cut,interviews, etc) are horrendous. Before I left for the job, I set up a low light preset based on what I used with my XL2.I thought that my XL2 preset also included NR, so I chose NR1. Although I couldn't see it in the viewfinder, the resuts were bizarre ghosting, and a fuzzy look.
I figured out what caused the problem by duplicating the conditions at home (low light,12db gain), and by zeroing out the preset changes (master ped,coring, and set up) one at a time.I relized that nr1 was the culprit.
After speking to Dan Keaton this am, I realize that people had warned about this useless function. The big question is, is there anything that can be done in post to make the footage less hideous? Dan suggested trying "motion blur".
We edit with PPRO 2.0. If anyone else has had the same problem,and if anyone has a soulution to salvage the footage, please post.
Thanks
Bruce S. Yarock
www.yarock.com

I have racked my brain and can think of no solution for the ghosting.

But I disagree that the NR1 and NR2 settings are "useless".

I have used these NR settings for some beautiful B Roll footage of city scapes at night. They take out all signs of video noise in the blacks - very film like. Also the resulting Mpeg compression shows no blocking artifacting in the blacks as there is no noise trying to be compressed.

The trick is to shoot on sticks and no motion or extremely slow pans or the ghosting will result.

I know this does not solve your problem though and wished I could help. The heavy NR settings seem to do some frame blending from back and forth. If there were a way to drop some of the blending - but then you would probably get a stutter motion that wouldn't work either.

Thanks ,John. I was shooting on tripod, but was panning.
Bruce Yarock
www.yarock.com

I recommend against the use of NR1 unless one is in a locked down situation (on a tripod with no panning).

The NR2 does not seem to have this problem.

So, unless there is an overridding reason to use NR1, I would use NR2 instead, and then be very cautious.

I will be running some tests, but it is my current understanding that the ghosting that occurs with panning using NR1 does not show up in the viewfinder. This is very dangerous as the resulting footage may be useless.

Yeah Bruce, sorry to hear about your footage being messed up. I can't think of anything either.

Just to echo what's already been said, you have to have little to no motion in the frame when using NR. Unfortunately, there's no free lunch in terms of image enhancement like this. It always involves some sort of compromise.

I believe the owner's manual warns that using noise reduction will result in ghosting of images with a lot of motion.

-gb-

Bruce what setting did you have NR1 on? The lowlight setting in the spreadsheet presets above recommends NR1 on LOw. will that setting cause ghosting?

Greg,
Thanks.Yeah...I just read the little section in the manual refering to "trailing afterimage". Kind of like calling the firestation after the barn burned down.
Bruce Yarock
www.yarock.com

Doug,
I think I had it on middle.If you want to try it, just hook up to a monitor, set the NR1 to middle and start panning.You'll see it. Then try "low".
Bruce Yarock
www.yarock.com

Bruce, I don't think you're going to be able to recover a "normal" image, from what you describe.

You might have to get creative and use the footage to create a "dream sequence" quality for that portion of the wedding - slo-mo, super impositions, color manipulation, step-frame.... Sometimes accidents force us to do things we might never do otherwise.. (as a documentary filmmaker my motto is "turn disadvantages into advantages").. I don't know how easily you can sell it to the client, but at this point it doesn't seem you have a lot of choices...

Steve,
Funny you suggested that approach. If it were MY customer, that's what I would do. Unfortunately, I was hired to do the shooting only, by a guy who does wedding video. It's his customer, and he does the editing.He's really particular, and this is the first (maybe last?) job I'm doing for him. I'm dreading telling him. I was hoping that I might find some solution. But if nothing works, I will try to sell him on the "drea" approach.
Bruce S. Yarock
www.yarock.com

take a little clip with you when you try to pitch the idea to him, take about 30 seconds that you have already modified to dreaminess before you go rather than talking your way backwards out of a problem, do something groovy with it and try to move forward if you can.

People tend to get very skeptical about new ideas unless you can show them that it works up front.

i'm surprised that nobody makes a "NR Removal" plug in yet.

What frame mode were you in? For reasons I do not know, Canon made NR1 equal to the HIGH mode of the XL2 and NR2 equal to the LOW mode. Very backasswards...that NR1 is HIGH...




ash =o)

Ash,
I was in 60i.
Bruce Yarock

Try deinterlacing in After Effects, that will curb the motion decay some...



ash =o)

Try deinterlacing in After Effects, that will curb the motion decay some...



ash =o)