Below are some of the most frequently asked and answered questions about Neat Video. Please feel free to ask questions regarding Neat Video by e-mail or in the Neat Video community forum.

General questions

• What is the difference between Neat Video Demo, Home and Pro plug-in?
• Should I uninstall Demo plug-in prior to installing Home / Pro plug-in?
• Should I uninstall the older version of Neat Video prior to installing a newer one?
• I think I have found a bug. How can I submit a report about the problem?

Filtration-related questions

• Why do I receive some crystal-like artifacts in the filtered frame?
• Filtered frame looks 'plastic'. Why?
• What is frequency?
• The filtration process is not very fast, is this normal?
• How to filter only the color noise (not the brightness noise)?
• What is YCrCb?
• Is processing via Neat Video best done before or after any other processing (i.e. tonal/color correction)?

The Demo plug-in has some functional limitations. For example, it can only process short video sequences with limited frame size. Please see the detailed Feature map for more details.

This is not necessary. You can install the Home / Pro plug-in over the Demo plug-in.

If you would still like to uninstall the Demo plug-in use the Uninstall shortcut in the Windows Start menu: Start | Programs | Neat Video | Uninstall.

This is not necessary. You can install a newer version of Neat Video over the older one.

Please use the online bug report form; please fill it out to let us know all the details necessary to reproduce the problem.

See more information about known bugs and bug fixes.

The crystal-like artifacts (usually these are the residual compression artifacts or residual noise) look like thin lines in the filtered frame. They can be easily eliminated by increasing the high frequency noise level in the filter settings (Neat Video should work in the Advanced mode to enable this control, see Tools | Advanced mode).

Note: presence of many residual artifacts is usually a consequence of using a poorly built, inaccurate noise profile or a profile built for another device and/or device mode. Please see the user guide for tips on building accurate profiles.

The reason is that too much filtration was applied. Let Neat Video keep some noise to obtain natural-looking results. Adjust the noise reduction amounts; for example, reduce the noise reduction amount in the luminance (Y) channel to 50-70%. Also, make sure the device noise profile does match the video sequence processed. Using an incorrectly chosen or poorly built profile can either produce plastic-looking results or leave residual artifacts (see the previous question).

The term (spatial) frequency is used in Neat Video to denote elements of a video sequence (both important details and noise/grain) of certain size.

High frequency corresponds to elements of smallest size. Medium frequency corresponds to elements of medium size. Low frequency corresponds to elements of (relatively) large size.

For the reference, see the noise samples of different frequencies
in the Noise Filter Settings tab of the Neat Video plug-in window.

This is normal, because the filtration algorithm is quite complex. We work on further optimization to provide better performance.

When the YCrCb spaces are used, set the value of the Y channel noise reduction amount (in the Noise Filter Settings box) to 0%. That will switch off filtration in the brightness (luminance) channel Y.

YCrCb is the name of a family of color spaces widely used in television, video, digital imaging, etc. In 'YCrCb' , 'Y' corresponds to the luminance channel , 'Cr' - to the Cr chrominance channel covering the red to blue-green color range, 'Cb' - to the Cb chrominance channel covering the blue to yellow color range. Because this space enables easy separation of the luminance and chrominance information, it is very suitable to conduct noise reduction.

Such operations as tonal/color correction are quite conservative from the standpoint of noise, i.e., they do not significantly change the noise characteristics of the video sequence. Therefore, filtering before or after makes little difference – as long as the noise profile is built and applied at the same stage of your workflow. For example, don’t use a device noise profile built with an unprocessed (the color correction is not yet applied) video sequence to filter the same sequence with the color correction applied.

On the other hand, certain effects, like sharpening or resampling, applied to a noisy video sequence may considerably change its noise properties. In this sense, it is generally better to use Neat Video filtration before applying such effects.