Better because of price. I had a RED and sold it to someone across the ocean for $.75 on the dollar since it was just too much $ for my clients to pay. Not much tops the RED MX in image/options tho except maybe the Alexa or Epic.

Oh I agree, there is a benefit, just technically it's still an 8bit 420 file wrapped in a 10bit 422 shell edited in an RGB environment. That workflow will obviously make any footage better. Does it make 10bit 422 footage into 12bit 444 footage? No, but it helps. No matter which way you look at it, it is still 8bit 420. That's all I'm saying.

Absolutely correct Brian.

For the record the "Absolutely correct' was in reply to "No matter which way you look at it,it is still 8bit 420".

BTW
They're both decent cameras in the right hands.

@Ian_T

What does your modified version of the Robino Films workflow for the GH2 look like?

Agreed Neat Video is the best noise reducer I've used - its oversampling is incredible.

Is that really feasible with a lot of footage? It must take days to render!

Probably better off doing Neat Video to near end of the process - when you know what you want in your edit.

@nic2011 I have not done a huge project with that workflow but it shouldn't be too bad. I don't think you'll have a "same day" turnover with this method when it comes to large projects but if you give yourself at least a couple of days (or slightly more) then depending on how well you CC you can have a large project done over the weekend.

For example....when I suggested lining up all of my clips .....that's already one step of editing. What I mean is...all of my scenes are in order and exactly where I want them on the timeline. If your PC can work with AVCHD (or these modified versions of it) then you either trim them or line them up where they need to be. That to me is the hardest part.

Then I just highlight all the clips, right click and "disable resample." From there I frameserve over to VD by selecting "File/Render As" and choosing "Debug Frameserver." You basically spend almost no time in VD because all you do there is choose "Neat Video" and configure the noise profile. Set it to the absolute minimum which is:

Click configure -- Choose "Auto Profile" - Click on "Noise Filter Settings" -- check the "Very low freq" radio button -- Under "Noise Reduction Amounts" slide the "Luminance channel" slider to 0% and leave the "Chrominance channels" at 100% -- and click "Apply." In the Neat Video Configuration box make sure the threshold is at 0% (I find you don't need any more than this" -- I keep the "Radius" at either 1 or 3 frames -- and leave the "Adaptive Filtration" unchecked -- Hit "Ok" and your almost finished -- At this point I just set the color depth (to what I mentioned before) and compression and just render the new lossless file.

The render here will take a long time. A five minute clip can take up to an hour to render on a 32 bit machine. So yeah...it can take half a day to do an hour long movie. But it's a necessary step and well worth it. I used to do what @Driftwood suggested and make the "noise clean up" the last process... but that kind of defeats the purpose of wanting to push your colors during the edit process. Besides..whether up front or after the fact...the render will still take the same amount of time. Also, if you chose to clean up afterwards that forces you to work with AVCHD on the timeline....and we all know, with AVCHD, when you add even just one plugin on the timeline....everything starts to slow down considerably (I'm still on a 32 bit PC by the way so YMMV).

@proaudio4 "I'm willing to bet one good reason you frameserve out to use Neat video is that Sony Vegas and Neat Video don't really "get along"."

Exactly!! I have Neat Video for Vegas also and I found it does not work quite as well (or maybe I should say "Quite the same"). I have no idea why. But the plus with Virtual Dub is that you have two different views (an "Input Video Pane" and an "Output Video Pane"). I love the fact that I can see the original video while watching the processed video in realtime (well...not exactly realtime....but you get the point) because I can see exactly what's going on with the clip and make any necessary quick changes. Helps me to determine if I have too much or too little. I can't afford to run through an entire looooonngggg denoise process only to come back and say..."Oops...I have to redo it over." I'd want to choke someone at that point. :-)

I use it on FCP - 8 core Hackintosh, its not so bad! :-)

Ian_T
Thank you for your detailed post process!

I'm willing to bet your cleaned up high quality (VK!) GH2 clips look great!
We can now model noise a lot easier.

Also, I think I've seen lifetimes pass by rendering stacked color grading>Neat Video within Vegas. LOL! .... actually, it's NO laughing matter.



Ralph_B, Neat Video 3 has caught my attention, especially if it's 2X. Do you know if there's a discount for existing Neat Video owners?

Thanks driftwood. I'm upgrading.

@driftwood
"I use it on FCP - 8 core Hackintosh, its not so bad!"

Out of curiousity, how many frames per second does it render (with temporal smoothing turned on)?
Also, are these 8 real cores or a quad core with hyper-threading? And what's the speed of the processor?