Hi folks,

I'll be getting my hands on HD10U in a few weeks, so I did some research work on some of the HD10 clips and screencaps I've downloaded from different places.

Chroma noise seems like the biggest problem with the camera, so I set out to get rid of it and ended up with quite successful results.

Here's an example:

www.liisikoikson.com/store_compare.jpg

I chose this one as an example, because the chroma noise is most evident (and distracting) here, (very low light level while shooting).

If chroma noise can be successfully reduced, then under proper conditions this camera could produce excellent results.

Peace

So do tell! What was your process of chroma reduction? The Virtuadub filter?
Ken

CineForm is also developing a chroma noise filter for our Premiere Pro product. The camera's chroma noise is very interesting and removable to significant degree without impacting sharpness and detail.

Here is a frame from one of the worst chroma noise examples I have seen online. As the chroma for this very dark scene was low I have boosted the saturation which only makes the noise worse. See the before and after noise filtering.

http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Matrix1000.jpg

Only for the Premiere Pro product? Why not in the Premiere 6.5 product as well?
Ken

It should work with Premiere 6.5 as well, although I haven't done any testing under 6.5 recently has Aspect HD for Premiere Pro is being prepared for release.

It better ;>)
PPro isn't really an upgrade it is a whole different program. A program I really don't want to learn.
Ken

The 'matrix' comparison is interesting. I tried to use the virtualdub filter, but with no good results, so I went for standard Photoshop commands instead.

Here's what I came up with:

www.liisikoikson.com/web/matrix_chroma_compare.mpg

That is a pretty nice job. What filters did you use under photoshop?

I've moved this to editing because the discussion headed there. Great one, though!

heath

filters I used in Photoshop:

color range (selections)
color balance
curves
median (under filters-noise)

that's it.

Those are fantastic results folks!, if this works on the JVC footage it will improve the picture quality 100%, and for me this Chroma noise has been my biggest problem with the picture.
Does anyone know of a good Chroma noise reduction filter for FCP or After Effects by any chance?

Thanks

I am seeing a lot on my film's footage.

By the way, FCP 4 is so different from FCP 3 that I can't figure out how to make a jpeg of clips. Anyone?

heath

If you spec what you need from a chroma-noise reducer, I'll build it into my DVNR for FCP plugin.

Graeme

Helen,

thank you for answering my email offline...your results are so encouraging, that i will continue this here.

so i understand that you do what you do, by first saving out an image sequence, and then batch processing those in Photoshop with an action that you created...this action is - in a nutshell - a series of:

color range (selections)
color balance
curves
median (under filters-noise)

please forgive me if i seem like i want trade secrets from you (as professionals we all have our cherished tricks), but i hope that i am not being too pushy by asking about some details.

i have just tried what you suggested, and it does work excellently to some extent...however, i do not understand some of the subtleties of your methodology.

do you select and process the magenta and green "spots" in separate steps? i was able to get the magenta to all but disappear, but the green had to be addressed in a separate step, and even after all that i am still a bit away from your almost flawless results.

being that the Chroma Noise has a similar make-up in every scene with this model HD-cam, can some of this be automated?

and more directly: could you share a Photoshop action that would do this (i am sure the user would have to do some tweaks to the parameters to account for different scenes)?

if you don't feel comfortable about just posting such an action (understandably so), i am sure that many people wouldn't mind sending you a PayPal contribution to get access to your methodology...Fred Miranda at http://www.fredmiranda.com has shown that there is a market for such a service...i particularily like how he started to wrap some of his processing steps into the PS plug-in architecture...this would make such a series of steps usable in Premiere Pro as well, being that it accepts PS plug-ins as well as PP and AE plugs.

you mentioned (in your email) that processing times of up to 5 hours per second of HD-video are not untypical on a fast machine...what speed machine are you using to arrive at those results?

thanks so much for what you have already contributed! the mpeg clip you have linked to is a revelation...outstanding!

best,
till

"5 hours per second" -- eekk thats is 10 mintues per frame! Makes me feel not so bad about my filter's 1-second computing time per frame of HD. It is isn't complete yet, but it should only get faster not slower.

ooops...my bad...Helen was reporting up to 5 hours for 1 *minute* of finished video...so about 10 secs per frame.

David,

do you think that you can tweak your algo to the point of getting results as close to flawlesness as Helen's? not to say that what you posted looked very, very good as well...especially considering the speed of processing.

To clear up the time issue: I always upsample the images to 2k (sometimes 4k) before applying any filters.

Till Krueger is nonetheless on the right track. I usually repeat the
color range/color balance 3-10 times, depending on the amount of noise (and different shades of color). Once I've reached more or less decent results, I blur the color channels with the 'median' filter. This tends to introduce some color bleeding in certain areas, so I use 'find edges' command to create a selection of the unblurred image to be placed on top (edges only). I use several passes here as well, to create a smooth decrease of median values towards the edges.

I hope this isn't too confusing...

Peace,
Helen


PS. Although every action I create is scene dependant, I think it's quite possible to write a plug-in that achieves similar results. It would be cool if someone could do that.

Tim,
I doubt it as mine is automatic, no human intervention. Greater filtering will take longer. For more natural images, with better tonal range, my current filter works very well, only that Matrix clip gave it some real work.

Sorry David, didn't mean to put you down with my last remark about the plug-in, I was just thinking that your filter approached the noise reduction differently than what I have been doing.

Helen,

i see where you're going with this...no, it's not too confusing (at least to me), but i can see where a lot of practice comes in here.

David,

yes, the Matrix footage has got to be one of the worst possible scenarios, and it must be true that more "natural" scenes could pose less of a challenge and exhibit - subjectively - cleaner results...i think that including that funtionality in your upcoming upgrade to Aspect HD would add the kind of value that could tip people like me over the edge between contemplating buying and going ahead with buying...

i am aware of the fact that even $1.2K are still a good buy in comparison to competing hardware solutions (which can run 10x the cost and more), but i have also been in the industry long enough to know how quickly a small upgrade to an already owned application (Premiere Pro, Vegas, etc.) can make a separate plugin obsolete...

but it's the kind of features that you have added, and are adding as we speak, such as real-time transitions, slow-motion, or the upcoming DNR etc., that make it tasty even to the "motion graphics and digital designers gone HD" such as me.

Helen's post has definitely started something, if you ask me...i am sooo reminded of the first couple of years of digital SLR photography and dealing with some of the artifacts of the otherwiese excellent results (i.e. the low light banding of the Nikon D1, or it's "magenta cast" problem)...there will at least be 2-3 years of opportunity ahead of us, for those that can automate the kind of tweaking that is necessary, such as what Helen is doing so very carefully, skillfully and effectively.

eventually the format/chips will mature...look at the excellent CMOS chip in the Canon 10D/300D now, that puts cleaner than the best of 35mm photography into the hands of the "consumer level" customers.

excuse my ranting, but i am excited about all of this.

thanks ya'll for this wonderful forum!!!

I think I have been getting nice results using avisynth, and the plugins cnr2.dll and TemporalCleaner.dll
here is a before:
4 megs Windows Media 9
http://www.celt.sunysb.edu/paul/HD_samples/karendirty.wmv

and after:
4 megs Windows Media 9
http://www.celt.sunysb.edu/paul/HD_samples/karenclean.wmv

Helen,

No offense taken. Yes, the technique I have applied is quite different. I orginally looked into this to see if I could improve chroma keys, without impacting luma at all. As I result my filter only manipulates the U and V components.

Tim,

Thanks for the nice comments on our features and pricing. We are too often thought of as the expensive solution, yet many forget that real-time HD is typically too expensive to even consider. CineForm is trying our best to make RT-HD affordable to all pro. and prosumer applications.

Isn't anyone going to take up Graeme Nattress and his offer to build a FCP filter to specs?
Graeme I don't understand the cause of chroma noise enough to describe what we would need in a filter to remove it. But I would certainly appreciate anything you could build to improve the look of the HD footage produced by these cameras.

yes, Graeme...

excuse the delayed reaction, but such a plugin for FCP would be *MOST* welcome.

personally, i am on the PC right now (as i am sure many others are in this JVC HD case), but i have been looking at FCP and DVD Studio Pro for future projects...so if you really feel up to the task, let us know what we can do to supply example footage, ideas, feedback, etc.

Yes to all the above - drop me an email so you can arrange to send me some test footage, and keep on board for specs of what it is exactly I need to do...

Graeme

Paul,

These are fine examples you posted, although I noticed certain loss of resolution on the 'clean' clip. It seems that the plugins you used affect the luma channel as well.

Here are the same frames cleaned and otherwise.

http://www.celt.sunysb.edu/paul/HD_samples/2.tif

http://www.celt.sunysb.edu/paul/HD_samples/1.tif

I have said before that I don't think my eyes are that discerning, but I don't notice a heck of a loss of detail here. Look at the wisps of hair for comparison.

It is possible that the temporal smoother mucks with the luma channel, cnr2.dll is specifically a choma noise reducer and does not touch luma according to the author.

Graeme,

i think the Matrix clip would be a great starting point as far as footage goes, because it is such an extreme example of noise...actually the noise in this clip is so extreme mostly because of the subject matter of the imagery...dark, even surfaces are the most noticable problem areas.

but the storefont clip with the Australian girl that has skin totally messed up by CN blotches would be a good example of low light portrait style shots...i don't think the whole clip was ever posted...the storefront footage would be a great example of a more "real life" scenario than the Matrix clip, though.

i have totally random shots from my first few days with the HD1, and if you could let me know what you need other than what is already there, i'd gladly pick a couple that meet the specs you would like to see...5 seconds should suffice, right?

the most productive methodology in my eyes, however, would be one where a color chart/resolution target is shot at different exposures...this way there would be a more reliable witness to actual color and resolution shifts...as i was playing with some of Helen's Photoshop ideas, i quickly found that what works well for one image, won't work so well for another one...color variations are just too big from scene to scene...

soooo, how does one find a solution that works for as much of the footage as possible? maybe David has already found one of the most effective ways of doing this for his Aspect HD platform...one second a frame is certainly very little in the light of what i have found other solutions to use up.

what else are you looking for as far as specs, etc.?

At this point I would like to call everyone up to post crabs or short clips (2-3sec) of material that seems most problematic in regard to noise and saturation. Esp. kind of material that cannot be cleaned up with designated plugins/actions. I need the challenge.

The Matrix clip is a good example of bad noise, but it's very monochromatic. I would like to get my hands on similarly horrid material, but with more versatile palette.

Cheers,
Helen

I have a LOT of good examples that I'd like to send you, please let me know where I can send them to and how many and how long clips you would like.
For me it is the flat areas of mid-tone colors that are the big problem with chroma noise, such as the side of a one-colored building, plain blue skies, flat blue/green water. Also very saturated reds display chroma noise a lot.
Helen, would it be possible (or even a good idea) for you to share your Photoshop settings with Graeme so that he could use them as a guideline for building an FCP chroma-noise reduction filter?. Not knowing enough about how the FCP filters are built I don't know if this is a ridiculous idea, but I just thougt I'd suggest it.

Thank you for looking into this, I think it's wonderful to see the cooperation that is going on on this this website to find creative solutions to problems with this HDV format, it's so much better than when the camera was first released when all we got was negativity from so many people.

Paul

Paul...so you're also in SF? maybe we can compare notes at some point.

i just ordered the HD10U and got an RMA to return my HD1...Helen, i hear you when you replied to my concern about in regard to seeing whether i can live with the edge enhancements or not (you said you couldn't)...now i am biting the bullet as well...the camera is so close to being awesome, but the EE is a thorn in my eye, and seriously impairs my enjoyment of this beautiful piece of equipment.

so as far as the clips go, i'll upload a few to my server, and send you Helen, and you Graeme the links by the weekend...i don't want to stress the download allowance too much, so i'd have to send it to the two of you only, unfortunately...unless someones else is also actively trying to resolve this issue (David?)...but i am sure most already have plenty of problematic footage on their harddisks.

on we march.

Has anyone tried NeatImage (http://www.neatimage.com/index.html) to clean up noise? I've used it on some stills, and it does a great job and isn't too slow. If you were to convert a shot into a sequence of images, create a profile from one image, and then batch clean the entire sequence, it might reduce the noise quite a bit.

The demo only lets you batch process one or two images, so its a bit hard to know for sure how it would work on moving pictures.

I checked the web page and I must say it looks promising (as well as affordable). It also seems to be able to mask the compression artifacts to some extent, which is great.

Thanks for the info!

NeatImage does look like cool software. It does seem to potentially reduce luma detail a little, and it would be a pain to process a lot of video sequences, but for the price it would might be the trick for short sequences.

My own filter developement work is still progressing. Here is the latest example. http://members.cts.com/crash/d/dan/temp/Bride.jpg

Those are very nice results David, I wish something like this was available for FCP or AE.

Paul

Neat Image has been a life saver so many times over the years...it's really an incredible tool, especially on high ISO noise reduction...haven't tried it for the chroma noise yet, but if you say that it'll do that as well, then it would be a good alternative.

the results you posted, David, are really, really nice...i just upgraded to the HD10U (received it 1 hour ago...away with the EE ugliness of the HD1, YES!), and my pocket book is a bit strained for the month...but the Aspect HD plugin is on my short list of things to get for this summer's production...it would just be such a HUGE help to edit in real-time, AND have chroma noise taken care of in final rendering with your plug...go, David, GO!

Helen, have you gotten some clips yet? i brought up all of the test clips i shot in the past week last night, and i think there's a few good examples...i did struggel a bit with MPEG Edit STudio, though, trying to do everything natively as .m2t ...i'll cludge my way through, though, and will figure it out.

Graeme,
http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:-f0nnbVSh9AJ:www.ifrance.com/freevcr/virtualdub/cnr-en.html+%22chroma+noise%22+%22source+code%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 (google cache, the original was down when I tried it)

Seems to describe a simple algorithm for chroma noise reduction.

I am going to take a stab at my first filter, any resource for FXScript that you can suggest?

I've got my chroma-noise plugin working as part of my G DVNR plugin from Set 1. I needed to update it anyway, so I thought I'd put it into the updated version. It's working a little different from VirtualDub, so it'll be worth trying to see if it works better or worse. Nicely, you can limit it to work on a certain colour....Drop me an email, Paul, so I can send you the plugin to test.

Graeme

Graeme, not sure if you got my email. Can we buy and download this new chroma plugin (I'm assuming it's for FCP) from your website? I would really like to try it out.

Thanks

I would love to have a chroma noise filter for FCP. I have been shooting a movie on the HD10u and I have a few takes that suffer from bad chroma noise. I am thinking of selling my Mac and buying a PC just so I can use the chroma noise filters. If there is a good possibility that a chroma noise filter for FCP is coming within the next two months then i will keep my Mac and FCP. So how about it Graeme?

Louis,

My theory would be to keep the Apple; things are coming out all the time, and I wouldn't doubt there is something on the way. It may already be there, whether built into Apple or as a plug-in.

heath

If you want to test the plugin, drop me an email and I'll send it to you graeme@nattress.com I don't want you to buy it until I know if it does the stuff you need it to!

Graeme

Graeme,
I tried the chroma noise plugin briefly yesterday and got some really excellent results! I was able to get rid of most of the chroma noise in some pretty extreme examples. However I really don't know what I'm doing with the settings yet . I just used the "spacial chroma noise reduction" section of the plugin, with the "spacial chroma amount" set to 1 and the "chroma blur" set up high. I used the color focus and it's color picker to select the color I wanted to process from the canvas. I had the "select similar colours amount" set to 38. (is this selecting more range of colors with a higher setting or less?)
Also, should the "colour samplng" setting be set to "4.2.0 P" for the HD1OU footage?
Would you have a guide to all theses settings by any chance Graeme? or some sample settings that you'd recommend as a starting point?

What would be an incredibly useful addition would be if you could see in the canvas or viewer what color range you were focusing on, much as you can do with FCP's 3-way color corrector, where it will show you a black and white image where the white areas are those you have selected to act upon with the color corrector, this is probably asking for too much but it would be sooo useful.

From what I see so far, this is a wonderful plugin Graeme and I think it will take care of 90% of the color noise problems with this cameras footage, which is a huge boost. Of course you'll have to process it on a scene-by-scene basis to get the best results I would imagine.

Thank you very much for doing this.

Thanks Paul!

The plugin is still beta, and hence no instructions yet, but your feedback is appreciated.

Increaseing the "Select Similar Colours" selects a greater range of colours, and yes, I can display this on screen. I had it working this way in a diagnostic mode while developing it, so it should be easy to add it back in. 4:2:0 P would be right for the HDV, although at the moment, it's not doing anything different from 4:2:0 I, and indeed, I may not need to make them different due to the way that FCP works, thus there might just be a 4:2:0 setting in the future. The good thing is, that there is the "side effect" of having your chroma upsampled at the same time as it's getting noise reduced.

Graeme

David Newman was kind enough to give me a beta version of the chroma filter to test out and after having it for about an hour here are the preliminary results. I have posted 3 sets of comparison shots using the Chroma Filter. 2 Sets have been highly oversaturated to exagerate the chroma. Tell me what you think about the results and if you would like an example or have some footage you want tested please let me know and I'll be glad to test it. Also, if you like the results, please compliment David and his team for such great work.

http://www.viproductions.tv/hd10/hd10shots.htm