I had a shoot in very low light that I've fixed with levels in after effects. It looks good, but the levels brought up a lot of grain and artifacts. Has anyone successfully limited the amount of grain or artifacts from darker areas in after effects? The footage is HDV (now pro res) so this was to be expected.

My first wedding gig I had the same issue- delays made for a very ark outdoor reception, and I was forced to gain up my cam. Unfortunately, there's only so much you can do with grainy/artifacty footage. If there's any way you can go back and re-shoot definitely do it. If not, I'd maybe spend a little extra time color grading- I was able to tweak a bit in Color (mac), then go back to AE and re-adjust the levels a bit and bring the artifacts down- but it didn't make much of a difference.

HTH!

Quick and dirty assist.


If you can live with a smear or light-trail effect, try putting indentical clips on three video tracks. Make the upper two tracks about 33% opacity. Slip the upper or third track two frames late and the middle or second track one frame late. Mute out or delete the sound tracks of these two clips.

Render out or export the layered vision.

You may have to bring up contrast as layerstacking will have the effect of reducing it.

Get yourself Neat Video's noise reduction plug-in for Adobe (PC, with Mac version released soon). Neat Video - best noise reduction for digital video (http://www.neatvideo.com/)
Slow to render on HDV...but results are amazing.

Didn't know about either of those. Always nice to learn something new from the crew here. Thank you guys!

Quick and dirty assist.


If you can live with a smear or light-trail effect, try putting indentical clips on three video tracks. Make the upper two tracks about 33% opacity. Slip the upper or third track two frames late and the middle or second track one frame late. Mute out or delete the sound tracks of these two clips.

Render out or export the layered vision.

You may have to bring up contrast as layerstacking will have the effect of reducing it.

I've been experimenting with the noise reduction effect in After Effects and it's not bad. It's trial and error with insane render time, so any tips on that would be helpful.
There are a couple of shots that I actually wanted a bit of a smear added, so I think I will try this suggestion too. I can't imagine how it would help fix grain, but I'll take a look.

Get yourself Neat Video's noise reduction plug-in for Adobe (PC, with Mac version released soon). Neat Video - best noise reduction for digital video (http://www.neatvideo.com/)
Slow to render on HDV...but results are amazing.

I was going to suggest the same thing

Just giving my thumbs up for Neat Video. I have the mac version.... the best grain eliminator for digital video!