Hello Sam,

I am not familiar with ptool yet as I'm just starting my research, and I'm not using any patch. I am using the latest firmware from Panasonic at the moment.

Also, I can see the noise in my viewfinder so I know that that isn't part of any compression artifact. However is the noise changed to look more blotchy after it is recorded onto my memory card??? I don't know, maybe??

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help!!

AM

Yes, I see noise at ISO 160, and it's annoying... so you are not alone.

The problem doesn't occur in evenly lit scenes, but if you are shooting dramatic scenes with well exposed areas alongside shadow & deep shadow areas, the shadows have noise.

Not a problem for straight talking head interviews, but narrative work often contains scenes with dramatic lighting for effect... well noise isn't the effect I'm going for.

It wouldn't be so bad if the noise was fine, consistent, grain like patterns, but it's not... at least on my GH2.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great camera for the money, and you can't expect $60K results at this price point.

Unfortunately the noise my camera generates is moving blotchy patches, which some may consider acceptable, but I don't. Its very distracting and in my opinion will ruin a dramatic scene.

Again, inexpensive camera, I can't complain too much, but it is basically useless to me for certain types of projects.

I am looking for a solution, whether it be hacks or settings. I have read some possibilities here, for which I am grateful and will try ASAP.

Any additional advice is certainly appreciated.

The noisy red channel is one of the GH2's few negatives. It will be interesting to see if it's improved in the new firmware.

Make sure you're using the correct Ptools version... for a while I was using 3.62 patches with the v3.61 Ptools and was getting unexpected noise. I realized my mistake when I was re-organizing my computer... ;)

@rigs
>I do notice more grain with the hack
Show me the grain. I find it hard to talk about what I cannot see. :-)

RE: Indoor white balance

Sorry for any confusion. I'm not saying you should use indoor white balance all the time. That would be absurd. What I'm saying is that when you use high ISO's, using indoor white balance is an effective way to reduce the noise. Now, when you use high ISO's, chances are it's in a low light interior or exterior at night. In both situations, indoor white balance will usually work without any significant color correction necessary.

I just don't want you to knee jerk at night and say, "oh, I'm outdoors. I must use daylight white balance". (Not to be confused with "jerk off at night". That's fine.)

@Ralph_B I'm still not sure I get it.

If I use a WB that's deliberately got less red in it, aren't I just going to have to boost the red channel back in post, and only reintroduce all that noise again? Only now it's boosted post AVCHD compression, which will surely be worse?

Unless some of the WB's are boosting the red channel until it's clipping?

@Ralph_B
Thanks a lot

Tell me about it. Geez... using cheap LED lights as the only lighting sources in a dark room wasn't easy task. I looked like Greench. I saw beautiful sunlight today and felt like redemption from Shawshank.

It's possible to shift color for photo in GH. Go to WB and press down. But that didn't work for video.

Nice Neat Video tips--I would add that if I am going to add sharpening, I do sometimes use the Neat Video sharpening. I'm assuming it does not sharpen the noise

@Ralph_B

Thanks for Neat Video tips :-)

Neat Video Guide

The key thing in Neat Video is to get a clean noise sample. If you do this, everything else will fall into place. Ideally you should shoot a gray card when filming. Or you could throw the picture wildly out of focus to get a smooth area of noise. As you know, Neat Video tries to auto-detect a clean area of noise. I would say 80% of the time it does a good job, but sometimes you need to manually move the square around to find a better area. Press the Auto-Profile button again to register the new area. If the lighting and exposure doesn't change, you can use the same noise sample for multiple shots. (Neat Video remembers the last used noise sample)

Here are my recomendations for the Noise Filter Settings:

Noise Levels:
Leave both Luminance and Chrominace at 0. This is the optimum setting if you have a clean noise sample. The only time you would change these would be to compensate for a less than perfect noise sample. But it never works as good as getting a clean noise sample in the first place.

Noise Reduction Amounts:
Neat Video defaults the Luminance channel to 60%. This is good for a still image, but not for video. There will be too much pulsing between frames. Drop it to 30%. If you have Preview turned on, it may look like it's doing nothing at all, but don't worry, it is.
Chrominance channels is fine at it's default of 100%.

I've found no use for "Smooth edges" and I recommend keeping "Sharpening Amount" at 0.
"Very low freq" may be useful if the picture has large blotchy areas of noise. With the GH2, I use it with clips shot with ETC at high ISOs. For most noise jobs though, I leave it off.

Now we come to an important part that most people don't understand, and that's the "Temporal filter." After you hit Apply, you may think you're done, but you're not. In the final dialog box, you see the Temporal filter. What this does is selectively blend areas from frames on both sides of the current frame. This is absolutely essential for video to eliminate pulsing. I find that a Radius of 2 frames to be excellent for all but the worst cases. Threshold is fine at 0. The Temporal filter does slow down rendering time, so don't use any more than you need.

The results of Neat Video can be absolutely astounding and worth the long render time.

NOTE: Feel free to copy this guide anywhere you want.

@Ralph_B

Hey RB

I have NeatV, could you please give me a quick overview of your settings or do you go auto? No rush just when you get a chance.

Thanks