How do I reduce Noise (too much video gain) in FCP 6?
 

Hi all,

Just cutting my first real attempt and in one scene I boosted gain way to much with my Canon A1. I read that FCP 6 has a NR filter but could not locate it in the index. They all seemed to relate to audio. Can anyone help?

Many thanks,

BL

I have a couple of troublesome shots like that in a film I'm cutting right now where the second unit cameraman shot a whole bunch of important B roll stuff with the gain cranked up WAY too hight by mistake.

In Final Cut Pro...:

What I do is to apply the 3 way c/c and then pull down the black (left hand slider) as far as reasonably possible, while adding a little to the midrange slider. I also reduce the white a bi with the right hand slider.

Not perfect, but better.

I'd be interested if anyone else has a magical solution.
Harry

I dont have any magical solutions, but I have noticed that many times, grainy footage does seem to appear less grainy when in a compressed codec... MP4/MOV/MPEG-2 for DVD.

How do you reduce noise?
 

Use a noise reducing filter like one of the free ones from here;

http://www.mattias.nu/plugins/

You can also duplicate your video layer, change comp setting to 'soft light' add a blur and reduce opacity. In fact there are any number of ways to do it.

Hope that helps.

Liam.

Thanks
 

I appreciate the responses. For now Mathias seems to do the trick but I will play around with the other methods when I have time. I guess the comment I read that FCP6 has a NR filter was wrong.

Cheers,

Bart

Magical solution, buy Neatvideo for after effects, the only sad thing is that you have to install a little partition with windows (neat video doesnt work on mac). but, believe me, that plugin is magic.

NR filter
 

I got the plugins you have talked about but can't find them after putting them in the plugins folder? how do I find & use them?

Hi,

Copy and paste ALL the text files into here :

/users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences/Final Cut Pro User Data/Plugins

Of course it'll be under the username you use on your system. I did this and restarted my FCP application and you'll see the plugins under video transitions and/or video generators.

Hope this helps.

I have tried quite a few noise filters with FCP, and the only one that gave really good results was "denoise" from RE:Vision Effects, Inc.. In that filter you can set separate settings for comparing a pixel with previous frames (temporal) or with surrounding pixels in the same frame. If you use only temporal, there is no softening of the image.

The render times are crazy, but the results way above anything else.