@CubeAce

Hi Ray,

I have a couple of problems, but not with your video, at least I don't think so.

Fancy new machine, VPX13 19.0.1.129 - I imported your video into a new project, accepted the settings (25fps etc.) and playback is not smooth with the image playing back on my UHD monitor with the Preview Monitor filling about a quarter of the screen. Not impressed at all. Intel UHD graphics 630 for Import and Export, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 for processing. Maybe I have gaming drivers or something, but still, playback of just the video with this machine should be smooth with no effects. Even stepping through frame by frame, the image would sometimes not move until I stepped back then forward.

Second problem - I noticed a rectangular box with corner handles near the upper left of the screen. I thought that it was in your video but I was able to drag the handles. It persisted until I clicked on 3D distortion with the video selected. What on earth is this?

I have no effects, nothing. Just imported to the timeline and played back.

I went through most of the video looking for those blackened images that you showed in the example, didn't find any.

As for the noise, I can see it and Neat Video quickly fixed it. I included some sharpening in NV - 100% on fine details, 30% in medium, 10% in large.

Before with NV off:

NV on:

John CB

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

The challenge was accepted - here is my result for the video you uploaded to Google Drive - Neat Video processed - I did not add any sharpening as when played back I did not think it necessary.

I will try with John CB's setting later all being well. Currently hunting for some ultra sticky pads I have for my sportscam mount .

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John.

The clip I supplied was a test shoot taken just within five minutes of the clip I put up. Here is the clip non altered within this video starting at around 3 mins 30 sec.

I must say both of you took much less time than I did on your processing, which I shouldn't be surprised at. For the longer clip I did it took over two hours using two effects from the plugins I have in MEP.

In your supplied video it has done quite a reasonable job and I can see the screen brighten briefly around 33 to 35 seconds in and the sound of a camera going off behind me. I think that is what is causing my black frames. I am redoing my clip I showed clip again but this time it will take five hours of rendering due to a different set of settings. Either way it would seem that neat video is at least as capable if not more so and maybe faster (not too hopeful about that bit). Sharpening sometimes reintroduces more noise so I understand the reluctance.

@browj2

Hi John.

Thanks for giving it a go. Also impressed with the result. I have no idea what happened in your setup but the file should be a direct copy of my file.

Here is the Media Info for you to compare your file to.

General
Complete name                            : H:\Christmas Dickens Festival 2019\100MEDIA\DJI_0197.MP4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : JVT
Codec ID                                 : avc1 (avc1/isom)
File size                                : 602 MiB
Duration                                 : 50 s 320 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 100 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2019-12-08 16:28:14
Tagged date                              : UTC 2019-12-08 16:28:14
Comment                                  : DE=D-CLike, Type=Normal, HQ=Normal, Mode=P
gpt                                      : +0.20
gyw                                      : +0.00
grl                                      : +0.00

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L5.2
Format settings                          : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP                     : M=1, N=30
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 50 s 320 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 100.0 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 50.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.241
Stream size                              : 600 MiB (100%)
Title                                    : DJI.AVC
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2019-12-08 16:28:14
Tagged date                              : UTC 2019-12-08 16:28:14
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Codec configuration box                  : avcC

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 50 s 304 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.14 MiB (0%)
Title                                    : DJI.AAC
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2019-12-08 16:28:14
Tagged date                              : UTC 2019-12-08 16:28:14

Other
Type                                     : meta
Duration                                 : 1 s 0 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Default                                  : No

If it is different then Google Drive is re-rending the files. If that is the case I'll do a wetransfer link.

[Edit]

I have checked the download file. It is identical.

Ray.

@johnebaker @browj2

One question to you both.

Do you use the home or Pro versions? I see the Pro version uses more than one GPU and is commercial licensed.

I noticed this notice on the new release .

Note: due to changes in NVIDIA drivers and CUDA Toolkit, GPUs with Compute Capabilities 3.0 are no longer supported.
Only GPUs with Compute Capability 3.5 and higher can be utilized by Neat Video 5.3

Which spec is that?

[Edit]

Never mind, found the answer it's Compute Unified Device Architecture CUDA.

@browj2

Hi John.

Just realised the file should be 50fps not 25fps.

@CubeAce, @browj2

Hi Ray, John

. . . .I imported your video into a new project, accepted the settings (25fps etc.) . . . .

John - the clip I downloaded shortly before the time you posted imported as 50 fps.

. . . . Do you use the home or Pro versions? . . . .

I use Pro version 5.4.8.

I tried the sharpening export and there was very little to distinguish between with and without.

For information the export for the clip took the following times:

Unsharpened, RTX 2060 8-9% usage, 6m 2 sec

Sharpened, RTX 2060 8-9%usage, 6m 14 sec

Sharpened, UHD 630 36 - 41%, 9m 6sec

Ray - interestingly on the UHD 630 the CPU temp only rose a few (<5 degrees) - cooling fans did not ramp up either.

John EB

@johnebaker @browj2

Hi john.

Yes, I found the same CPU GPU usage, possibly because most of the work involved is using mainly 3D graphics more than video encoding / decoding / copying. The main difference is my Intel GPU was bouncing back and forth between 60-100% for the entire duration. CPU and nvidia hardy ticked over. Temperature of my CPU barely moved, staying around 38℃ but my minimum fan speed for the CPU is 245rpm. It got to around 820rpm or so during rendering as I have made my own curve of acceptable temperatures and when the fan should kick in more. My current CPU has never reached above 69℃ so far to my knowledge.

I tried rendering at 1080p using HEVC and the result was better (and faster) with no blank frames but the upload to YouTube got compressed and looks worse than the original footage. I'm trying again now at proper resolution to see if that gets encoded any differently on YouTube. If that also gets compressed I'll do one more with higher output settings in MP4 to see is the blank frames go away. Although my method results in less dynamic range I do like the sharpness of the result in fur, hair, eye, and feather details. What I'm not so fond of is the export times.

Power usage is not that high though so the extra time is not really using much more power.

I'm torn at the moment between DeNoise or the Hit Film Stylizer Pack. 🤷‍♂️🤔🤪

I was also hoping Alwyn might have an alternative suggestion to look at.

I think I will turn in now and leave the PC to run it's course. It may be some time....

Ray.

Sorry Ray, I can't cope with the resolution. 😂

@AAProds

Hi Al.

I sometimes wonder if I can as well 🙏🙏🙏🤞🤞

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . I'm torn at the moment between DeNoise or the Hit Film Stylizer Pack. . . . .

For me, if I were shooting video more in the scenarios you are, NeatVideo denoiser would win the day by miles.

The Stylizer would quickly run out of use for me, most of the things it can do can already be done in MEP/VPX.

I put practical over 'wizzy' any day.

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John.

I would love to see you change some of your footage into coloured pencil work 😂

Ray.

@johnebaker @browj2 @AAProds

Hi John.

The decision may be forced upon me. I can export to HEVC and not produce the blank frames but can't in MP4. Worse, the blank frames are random and seemingly have nothing to do with the footage itself.

No idea why that is as it is still mainly being processed by the Intel GPU but YouTube no matter what always re-encodes my HEVC uploads and compresses them to a point they appear too 'Blocky', whereas the MP4 files get encoded without compression and show as I see them on my PC (or the conversions are so close to my own files I can't see a difference).

Also, the time taken to render for even a small project trying to do it only with the plugins I'm using would take days not hours. 😩😩😩

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . I can export to HEVC and not produce the blank frames but can't in MP4 . . . .

The exports I did were to MP4 h.264 with no blank frames.

. . . . The decision may be forced upon me . . . .

Does this mean you are looking for a new GPU?

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John.

Yes I understand that but I'm assuming I taxed the HD 630 too much using the plugins I used instead of NeatVideo. Every frame rendered produced a peak of 100%. Some peaks lasted the duration of two frames rendering. I'm assuming those were the blank frames.

This is what my HD 630 was doing for the entire renders. It was less taxed using HEVC although export times were slightly longer.

Ray.

@johnebaker @browj2

Hi John.

OK.

So I adjusted my settings and got the Intel GPU down to levels that didn't peak but still gave a reasonable result.

Result was a slightly faster rendering time (about half of before but still around four hours) and I still managed to produce a few blank frames but only a couple.

So I downloaded the demo of DeNiose which I had done before but this time really took notice of how to use it.

It could be awkward with some of my clips finding a suitable place to collect the noise data but managed I think.

No-one mentioned it exclusively uses the nvidia card for rendering. That is a big plus and rendering only took an hour for the same clip along with one additional third party plugin (as opposed to 4 Hours + on the last last tryout) to get a similar look to what I had before.

Using my method.....................Using Neat Video.

To my eyes the NeatVideo version is still slightly less sharp with possibly too much smoothing although contrast is better.

I will upload the resulting video here later when it has compiled on YouTube.

On the minus side NeatVideo doesn't play well on playback within MEP and doing a pre-render of the clip takes as long as doing an export. Conclusion : I would have to play the timeline with effects disabled. That would be good for one or two clips spaced apart but what about a whole video?

Any ideas?

Using the tool from NeatVideo to see how well my system would handle using it the result showed :

Best combination: CPU (7 cores) and GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 1650 SUPER}: 24.5 fps. Which is roughly what I think I was seeing.

I must admit the NeatBench5 is a neat little program that only runs from its executable file and is only 7,614KBs large. Nice touch. I wish Magix and other programs could do something similar.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . Best combination: CPU (7 cores) and GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 1650 SUPER}: 24.5 fps. Which is roughly what I think I was seeing. . . . .

Were you exporting Full HD 1920 x 1080 or 4K UHD?

With 4K UHD I do not see the rates NeatBench is giving - however this is not surprising given NeatBench 5 runs with these default settings

Frame Size:     1920x1080 progressive
Bitdepth:       32 bits per channel
Mix with Original:      Disabled
Temporal Filter:        Enabled
    Quality Mode:       Normal
    Radius:     2 frames
    Dust and Scratches: Disabled
    Repeat Rate:        0% of repeated frames
    Jitter Filtration:  Normal
Spatial Filter: Enabled
    Quality Mode:       Normal
    Frequencies:        High, Mid, Low, Very Low
    Artifact Removal:   Enabled
    Edge Smoothing:     Disabled
    Sharpening: Disabled

With 4K UHD the rates I get are ~ 10 - 12 fps with the highlighted options turned off, and 8 - 10 fps with them on.

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John.

I just ran the exe.file on its own. it seems to do its own thing measuring performance of the different bits of the PC.

If you mean is that what I'm seeing exporting at 4K then yes. I get around one second of rendering done for each minute of processing and there seems to be a way of circumnavigating the resolution restriction although I'm not 100% sure what is happening. The export is 4K and the full frame but look what happened to the watermark.

When with the demo it should look like this.

Both took the same amount of time.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . I just ran the exe.file on its own. . . .

So did I - if you expand the Command window to see the full output you can see what the test parameters are - that is where I copied them from.

John EB