8bit → 10bit video with temporal noise filtering, stunning results

[cantsin]

Thanks @Attila Bakos, that obsoletes new tests of my own.

[Inazuma]

When I used to shoot with the C100 II in CLOG, I had major problems with macroblocking. In my experience, Neat Video alone was enough to get rid of a lot of it. I don't really think bitdepth upsampling has anything to do with this.

[Matthew Hartman]

11 hours ago, Inazuma said:

When I used to shoot with the C100 II in CLOG, I had major problems with macroblocking. In my experience, Neat Video alone was enough to get rid of a lot of it. I don't really think bitdepth upsampling has anything to do with this.

Neat Video is THE defacto industry noise reduction plugin worth every cent they charge for it. I would rather purchase Neat Video than buy another LED light. 

My process is to first run an instance of Neat Video, than grade the footage, then add a very subtle instance of noise to further help with dithering. In most applications, I don't need the noise instance to help smooth out banding and artifacts because Neat Video takes care of most, if not all of it. The noise layer is mostly psychological for me because that's how I took care of business before Neat Video came along. I seriously doubt a manufacture could script a NR algorithm in-cam on the fly with the power the NV delivers. 

[Attila Bakos]

16 minutes ago, Matthew Hartman said:

Neat Video is THE defacto industry noise reduction plugin worth every cent they charge for it. I would rather purchase Neat Video than buy another LED light. 

My process is to first run an instance of Neat Video, than grade the footage, then add a very subtle instance of noise to further help with dithering. In most applications, I don't need the noise instance to help smooth out banding and artifacts because Neat Video takes care of most, if not all of it. The noise layer is mostly psychological for me because that's how I took care of business before Neat Video came along. I seriously doubt a manufacture could script a NR algorithm in-cam on the fly with the power the NV delivers. 

Yeah many people do it like this, as having a bit of noise reduction in the first node can also lead to cleaner keys.

[kidzrevil]

@cantsin absolutely stunning find ! This makes so much sense ! Neat video works in 32bit rgb and its creating new pixels from neighboring pixels. Downsampling to 1080p AND doing this should take the image even higher ?

question is should we do our NR in 4K or after when downscaling to 1080p where the NR will have way more neighboring pixels ??

 

[Matthew Hartman]

9 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

@cantsin absolutely stunning find ! This makes so much sense ! Neat video works in 32bit rgb and its creating new pixels from neighboring pixels. Downsampling to 1080p AND doing this should take the image even higher ?

question is should we do our NR in 4K or after when downscaling to 1080p where the NR will have way more neighboring pixels ??

 

Not to sound adversarial, but does it really matter? The purpose of more bit depth is to gain quality, meaning visually. If Neat Video is cleaning up the artifacts that some 8bit cameras produce, does it really matter what the end bit depth is if the visual issues are rectified? 

[cantsin]

It matters for issues like banding in gradients (especially in Log footage converted to Rec709 and graded), which are a systemic limitation of 8bit rather than "artifcats that some 8bit cameras produce". Attila's sample images, recorded from a Fuji XT2 as high-quality 8bit 4:2:2 with an external recorder in ProRes, provide excellent examples.

[kidzrevil]

@Matthew Hartman for my needs absolutely. Vimeo and youtube is allowing us to upload 10bit footage to their servers and I want to take advantage of that. My plan is to reduce noise and grade in 4k then export to 1920 x 1080 10bit for upload to vimeo and youtube.

hey @cantsin I ran phase one of my tests and it looks like your theory is true. I tried using Neat video to upscale to 4k and it handled the image admirably. For my next test I am going to upscale the footage to 4k denoise it there add real film grain to it and then export to 1080 and see how Neat video handles that. I’ll let you be the judge of my results upscaling to 4k 

 

[Mark Romero 2]

@kidzrevil How are you upscaling to 4K? Was this covered already and I missed it? Is it something that Neat can do? Thanks and sorry if this is a dumb quesiton(s)

[kidzrevil]

Its not a dumb question at all ! When you scale to frame size in premiere adobe upscales the footage for you. Neat video then works on the upscaled footage cleaning it up and creating new pixels. From there I add grain to replace all the digital noise I removed. I got the idea from how 4k tv’s work with 1080p footage. Most denoise,upscale and sharpen 1080p content and the difference is nearly imperceptible.  @Mark Romero 2

[Mark Romero 2]

Just now, kidzrevil said:

Its not a dumb question at all ! When you scale to frame size in premiere adobe upscales the footage for you. Neat video then works on the upscaled footage cleaning it up and creating new pixels. From there I add grain to replace all the digital noise I removed. I got the idea from how 4k tv’s work with 1080p footage. Most denoise,upscale and sharpen 1080p footage and the difference is nearly imperceptible.  @Mark Romero 2

@kidzrevil  Thank you.

{Light flickers on over head}

So you mean you were shooting your original footage in 1080p, right?

Thanks again.

[kidzrevil]

@Mark Romero 2 lmao yeah

[webrunner5]

32 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

@Mark Romero 2 lmao yeah

Gee Kidz I looked at it on my Samsung Note 8, and to me it just looks like pretty damn good 1080p. Not sure about 4k HDR?? Even on my 2k 30" monitor it looks, well, like 1080p?

I read the reply's about what cantsin suggested, not totally buying it, but worth a try. Interesting concept. I seem to remember something like it ehh few years ago on DVXuser.com.  Seems to work but ehh, maybe not?

But there is no way I see to set the viewing Resolution on your video that I see, so maybe it really IS set to 1080p for me??? What stuck me the most was that guy in the chair had to at one point in time had one SORE ASS head when he got those Tats LoL. He must have had to sleep face down or standing up for a week!

[Matthew Hartman]

7 hours ago, cantsin said:

It matters for issues like banding in gradients (especially in Log footage converted to Rec709 and graded), which are a systemic limitation of 8bit rather than "artifcats that some 8bit cameras produce". Attila's sample images, recorded from a Fuji XT2 as high-quality 8bit 4:2:2 with an external recorder in ProRes, provide excellent examples.

I think you totally misunderstood my question. 

[tellure]

This is all super interesting.  For us color grading and bit depth noobs out there, would this 8bit to 10bit chroma upsampling also help in more pedestrian cases - e.g. a non-LOG, non-graded shot in 8bit that already has some banding (such as a sky in a scene with a lot of other colors and gradients)?  I'd love to know if it's helpful in some general use cases beyond LOG and hardcore grades and such.

[Deadcode]

We are talking about the following: 

Can we upscale 1080p 8 bit footage to 4K 10 bit if our method is noise reduction and diffuse banding with grain? 

Sounds like a magic trick... or im just sceptical..

Im using this method for a while now anyway but i dont think we can talk about 10 bit color information here.

[JBraddock]

I’d come across a similar approach while I was looking for film grain solutions.

 

[Mark Romero 2]

9 hours ago, Matthew Hartman said:

I think you totally misunderstood my question. 

 

6 hours ago, Deadcode said:

We are talking about the following: 

Can we upscale 1080p 8 bit footage to 4K 10 bit if our method is noise reduction and diffuse banding with grain? 

Sounds like a magic trick... or im just sceptical..

Im using this method for a while now anyway but i dont think we can talk about 10 bit color information here.

If you are both saying what I think you are saying, which is, "Let's just call it improving image quality instead of converting to 10-bit," then I am in agreement.

[kidzrevil]

6 hours ago, Deadcode said:

We are talking about the following: 

Can we upscale 1080p 8 bit footage to 4K 10 bit if our method is noise reduction and diffuse banding with grain? 

Sounds like a magic trick... or im just sceptical..

Im using this method for a while now anyway but i dont think we can talk about 10 bit color information here.

I dont think we can upscale to 4K 10bit but I am extremely optimistic about downsampling 4K 8bit to 1080p 10bit with the assistance of neat video. Noise reduction works by averaging neighboring pixels to create new ones. This means by either doing NR in 4K & exporting to 1080p 10bit or downsampling to 1080 10bit from 4K and doing NR mathematically there are enough neighboring pixels for 1080p 10bit 4444

[Matthew Hartman]

1 hour ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

 

If you are both saying what I think you are saying, which is, "Let's just call it improving image quality instead of converting to 10-bit," then I am in agreement.

Exactly. 

1 hour ago, kidzrevil said:

I dont think we can upscale to 4K 10bit but I am extremely optimistic about downsampling 4K 8bit to 1080p 10bit with the assistance of neat video. Noise reduction works by averaging neighboring pixels to create new ones. This means by either doing NR in 4K & exporting to 1080p 10bit or downsampling to 1080 10bit from 4K and doing NR mathematically there are enough neighboring pixels for 1080p 10bit 4444

Anytime you are adding new sub sampling to a bitmap image, you are theoretically adding bit depth to it, which is just a way of saying adding new pixels that were not present in the original file. 

I'm still trying to figure what the end game of this is for you personally, besides obvious data gain/image quality. It sounds like you want your 8bit file to register as a 10bit file so that HDR is automatically triggered on YouTube playback? If that's the case you could just output your 8bit footage to a 10bit codec.