Is Resolve's New AI Noise Reduction All Hype?

Can Resolve's AI-based NR dethrone my fav NR plugin?
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This video compares different noise reduction techniques, focusing on DaVinci Resolve 19's new AI-based Ultra NR, traditional noise reduction methods, and my fav third-party plugin. This is the ultimate showdown.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Introduction and teaser
00:57 - Overview of test footage
01:31 - Introduction to Resolve's Ultra NR
02:24 - Testing Ultra NR on first clip
05:28 - Testing Ultra NR on second, more challenging clip
07:27 - Comparison with traditional noise reduction in Resolve
10:03 - Introduction and testing my fav NR plugin
12:04 - Advanced technique: Regaining sharpness after noise reduction
13:19 - Adding film grain for final touch
14:36 - Final comparisons and performance analysis
15:29 - Conclusion and call to action
ABOUT ME
I'm Waqas Qazi, founder and senior colorist at Qazi & Co. I have worked with PRIME VIDEO, ADIDAS, TOYOTA, VIZIO, etc. My mission is to share industry secrets by making fun and practical videos on color grading.
My Work: waqasqazi.com/
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SOCIAL
Podcast: spoti.fi/3Y4XU4A
Instagram: / theqazman
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Threads: www.threads.net/@theqazman
#waqasqazi #davinciresolve #colorgrading

[@action-grandpa]

Don't want to come across as a fanboy, but 5 minutes with Qazi is most often better than five hours of research and experimentation on my own :)

[@theqazman]

My man. ✊🏽

[@JPrinceoper8r]

I agree!!!

[@Awthentik]

Truth

[@initialfocus]

damnnnn you cleaned that up nice! For anyone curious the specs of each shot. Both were the DJI Ronin 4D-8K sensor. First clip used DJI's 17-28mm lens at I believe 6400 ISO during a low light test clip Shot in ProRes RAW. Second clip was the SIRUI 35mm Anamorphic. ProRes HQ as well and I honestly forget the ISO but definitely high. I very much poorly lit that scene and you saved it 🙌🏻

[@theqazman]

Yeah dude it's insane. Thanks for hooking it up bro. ♥️

[@mrshaheedmalik]

That pre-intro footage is crispy. 🔥

[@theqazman]

Haha. Ty bro. ❤

[@ThanakritGu]

Love the updates Qazi!

[@happylukman]

Love this video man!!! Can’t wait for the next one

[@theqazman]

Ty. Next one will be out on Monday. 💪🏽

[@armando.visuals]

Thank you so much for this video! Exactly what I needed.

[@jdavevisuals]

Really really useful! Thanks Qazi

[@theqazman]

You're welcome.

[@arthurwoo]

Another winning vid. Always providing value!

[@theqazman]

Ayyyy! Long time bro. Hope you're well. Ty for the love.

[@personaldronerepair6141]

Like Button Smashed! Keep 'Em Coming!!

[@theqazman]

Another one drops soon.

[@JoseSpenaN]

One of the best reviews Yet. Putting on the side of tech and also the side of been fast get it done. Thank you QazMan :)

[@theqazman]

Ty bro. Happy to help.

[@marietafarfarova]

Ooh, I need to set up the performance of my Neat the way you have - that's such a helpful tip! And I agree completely with your opinion, Qazi. Neat is still my lifesaver whenever I have issues with heavy noise regardless it is such an old plugin. It stills works like a charm!

[@theqazman]

Thank you and it's unbelievable after so many years later nothing comes close.

[@PopoRamos]

big fan of neat video, been using it for about 7 years, back when using it added HOURS of render time lol.

[@defflounge]

It the best Qazi, a great teacher a great colorist, way to go sir

[@8KHDRVideoBySittipong]

Thank you for sharing.

[@michelangelotorres_filmmaker]

At the end of the day, Blackmagic would have been better off buying Neat Video and incorporating it into DVR 😁

[@theqazman]

Funny, I always thought that.

[@mishukx]

You are a Magic Man! Just Unreal!! Superb!!!

[@theqazman]

Ty bro. Always appreciate your support.

[@davewroberts]

Neat is great! It saved my butt many times!

[@theqazman]

Same

[@rodprod8522]

Soooo useful! thanks for sharing! Comparing the rendering frame rates was a lovely touch because we can all crank NR to max but who wants it to take multiple hours (or even days) to render!

[@theqazman]

Appreciate the love and exactly.

[@Giovanni-Giorgio]

I remember my pc having mental breakdowns using Neat video in AE back in the days. Resolve is the way for me.

[@theqazman]

Agreed

[@FrancescoDallOlmo]

Been using neat video for my timelapses. It’s just insane how it outperforms any other NR software

[@theqazman]

💯

[@antonkarpov7282]

Also big thanks to you work. My skill was starting growing faster after your tutorials even consider that English not my native language. So far it's my top one channel to learn color grading!

[@theqazman]

🙏🏽🤗

[@Awthentik]

Great video. I’m gonna dig more through your videos but I love how you have your window customized to show frames and how you went full screen but could still see the inspector. Curious if you have a video about how you do your setup in Davinci. About to look now, but great video per usual

[@theqazman]

I have pro work walk-through videos coming soon. Those are gonna be super long taking it through every single thing that I do and I’m working on professional gigs so stay tuned for that.

[@Awthentik]

@@theqazman awesome! Appreciate you 💯

[@Nebertk]

Nothing beats neat video....

[@ashokdhar7216]

Nice bro..!❤

[@VladislavNovickij]

Yep ✊ I always use Neat Video for more complicated shots its amazing but usually standard classic Resolves NR way is more than enough no AI needed 👌

[@theqazman]

Agreed

[@ColeManning-zf8bf]

Jesus the talking head setup is look crazy amazing. Colors popping everywhere

[@theqazman]

Haha. Ty bro.

[@boldbearStudios]

I started using Neat Image for photos around 2003 and Neat Video in 2007 within the Adobe suite. But somehow I forgot to bring it into my Resolve workflow. 😮 Thank you for reminding me that this is still the best tool for noise reduction even today! 🤩

[@theqazman]

It happens and happy to help bro.

[@rickdeckard2240]

I use neat NR for 2-3 years and it saved hundreds of tv shows and music videos, even in interlaced mode. It only bugs in 2 situations quite dramatically : on speed modified clips (for which I use renders in place first without NR) and deinterlaced footage (interlaced footage in progressive timeline) for which I must or denoise as interlaced first and then put on progressive timeline, or deinterlace all my i footage via the media management and then work with the new p medias. But this plugin does miracles, absolutely. And its price really is affordable now.

[@theqazman]

Thank you for sharing your insights bro. ♥️

[@rickdeckard2240]

@@theqazman thanks to you for your great work and ideas

[@lucasallegretto]

cool!

[@surajkafle2028]

❤❤❤love this one❤can u explain post and preclip on color page..thank you❤

[@theqazman]

Will do

[@antonkarpov7282]

I have great results with this new tool and surprised that it don't work wery vell in second footage or maybe you have to bring exposure up to help AI better do his job. I use in kombinator mode when you separate your image to RGB because noise strength can be different in red and green color channel. Then I clean luma if it very noisy especially footage from smartphone.

[@jonathangolgota]

a few a week ago i using using neat video, clean 45 min 4k after look some video test on youtube , render in 1 day with my pc build, but thje result is amazing

[@cristouk]

Yes, Neat Video is the best, despite looking like a "consumer" app. One of the best things is the optmiser, which tests all possible cominations of the CPU and GPU to find the best setting. I work in VFX and a lot of big VFX houses have it - that should say something... And to add, I bought mine over 6 years ago and I still get free updates (Adobe take note ...)

[@theqazman]

I second that bro. Every post house I worked at they had Neat.

[@johnsaxz]

I feel lowkey for the second shot you should have tried moving the square stuff round a bit to see if it makes a difference.

[@TommySidorski]

I'm not too concerned about the performance problem of NR, that's to be expected and why you should do it only to clips that absolutely need it. If it just has a slight amount of noise that you want to get rid of and still have somewhat good performance, then you can use the standard one. Either way, just turn turn on color cache>user and cache the NR node; but put the NR node in the the very beginning of your node tree so everything done after it will have good playback performance.

[@OCAIOF]

"4 frames, not horrible". This one got me 😂

[@V-adventurous]

Nice

[@Endimione17]

good advice to kill luma reduction; that's the same I do. AI NR is essentially a softening tool and sometimes it warps the motion too, in very dynamic shots; so it means to fight a little bit in some clips with Temporal NR

[@theqazman]

Agreed

[@neocaron87]

With digital camera's I like to get the cleanest image possible and add my own type of grain afterwards dialing it exactly to where I want depending on the project. So for me this tool is going to be amazing :D Edit: Watched the full video well maybe not... TBH currently the best noise reduction is Topaz AI VIDEO, the latest version is insanely good.

[@mrshaheedmalik]

Topaz Video AI's performance is terrible inside of Resolve currently.

[@neocaron87]

@@mrshaheedmalik Performance is horrendous in Resolve for sure, and I don't use it inside resolve, but for edited clips it works super well and is worth the back and forth.

[@theqazman]

It's good but not as optimized.

[@Wh1teland]

Luckily I hardly ever need NR since I'm also filming myself and making sure everything is lit and exposed the right way. Great video tho!

[@ChusmaChusme]

12:50 I do gotta ask. Why choose Use GPU Only instead of choosing Use CPU and GPU? It does seem useful if your CPU has some extra resources it share to help apply NR.

[@peterkapas3514]

Qazi, thanks for this comparison. Well done. I use Neat Video within DaVinci Resolve, but I keep running into stuttering issues if the video has any sort of speed ramping. How do you deal with that issue? I reached out to Neat Video and its apparently its a known issue within DaVinci, so I still have to rely on the built in Traditional NR for speed ramped footage.

[@theqazman]

Haven't experienced anything like that but I'll definitely look into it.

[@Magmafire]

Neat Video should sponsor you lol

[@theqazman]

Haha. I should reach out.

[@oscarmunoz6957]

Mother of f*ks. That third party's plugin is INSANE. Thanks alot!

[@theqazman]

You're welcome

[@yochintohere]

What will happen if you give the Ultra NR same area to sample as Neat video detected as best area. I would really want to see that please.

[@christoffer886]

Been using and recommending Neat Video since its release. Always to deaf ears. It boggles my mind that it's so overlooked. On top of that, if you own a specific camera, you can just do grey scale template shots of all ISO levels on that camera and prep noise templates for neat video so that the only thing you need to know about your shot is what ISO level it has and boom, remove the noise with next to no tweaking needed. Adding some film emulation grain on top of everything after grading and other stuff is done will help cover whatever banding issues that can occur depending on the codec it was shot in. Using a Komodo with the focal reducer and a CN-E lens at T1.2 shooting night scenes in ISO3200 with NeatVideo and grade applied basically makes it better than the Sony A7 as that camera is basically doing in-camera NR that's less accurate. This is why people testing cameras and producing "test videos" basically trick people into believing something has more quality than it has because the internal processing of such cameras trick people into thinking it looks better than what the capabilities actually are. Actual RAW, high quality footage with NeatVideo blows most off the shelf cameras away.

[@theqazman]

Agreed on everything ♥️💪🏽

[@DigitalCreations2012]

I've used Neat for almost 8 years in Edius

[@theqazman]

Great choice.

[@tomburden]

I would love to see this compared with topaz video AI.

[@theqazman]

Will do

[@LeeHarris]

I just tried to use AI NR on a 12 minute short film. After 3 hours it had only rendered 5% for a 1920x1080 output. I cancelled that crap and went back to normal NR; it was done in less than an hour.

[@theqazman]

Yep. It's pretty bad as of now.

[@incaroads001]

Sorry. But when you say, "now if I make it full screen", how did you put your screen into that particular mode? Crtl+F just fills the screen with no inspector. Thanks.

[@meyerdigitalfilm]

One question to the professionals do we need to clean noise up or is there an occasion where we can leave it alone? I didn’t do much NR yeat except I had very terrible client low light footage in that case I throw it thru

[@theqazman]

Best to use on underexposed footage. It isn't necessary if stuff is exposed well.

[@koushikbhattacharya832]

qazi thanx for making this tutorial...there is no download option to get these footage....I subscribed all ur Chanel for last 5 years...plz help me

[@theqazman]

Practice footage in the description.

[@koushikbhattacharya832]

@@theqazman whenever i try to download this practice image every time downloads the previous video practice image

[@PTFWWDB]

dang I paid for Topaz, is it comparable to Neat?

[@theqazman]

It's good but not as optimized as Neat.

[@jax8964]

Plz try topaz video AI enhance for noise reduction and sharpening for better results and make a comparison video dude plz....!

[@theqazman]

Will do

[@AbrazoProductions]

I have tried it on different video recordings of music concerts in different light conditions. I always went back to Neat 🙂 I have also tried it in Photoshop and again Neat is winning.

[@topazlabs]

@@theqazman We would love to hook you up with the latest version and see what you think !

[@aricloudstudio8544]

Why is there banding happening after you applied neat video plugin?

[@theqazman]

KZbin compression.

[@joshrathbun1]

and just like that, I bought Neat video plugin, thank you for spending my money

[@theqazman]

Should've reached out to them for sponsorship. 🤔

[@PTFWWDB]

I've spent my adult life trying to remove h264 artifacts and noise , I never understood why there were Grain and Film Grain features in software lol like "why would you want to add grain" .. but you say it adds volume, interesting, can you articulate that more?

[@theqazman]

Will do

[@mariuswickli3206]

H264 artifacts and digital, colorful noise make an image look digital/amateurish/unnatural. Film grain (only black and white noise) originates from the production with analog film (-rolls) 🎥. As we consume a lot of cinematic content (like movies) that have film grain, we typically associate grain with beeing cinematic. This of course influenced by the type of content you consume (Marvel Avengers do not really have this esthetic for example but Dune and Openheimer do). It's like digital and analog audio. The analog sounds does typically sound more "natural". At the end of the day it's preference but You should also consider your client. Some Local businesses might not understand the look of grain and sees it as a mistake but a client like Porsche that produces a global cinematic campaign would totally understand.

[@PTFWWDB]

@@mariuswickli3206 makes total sense, I appreciate that. Analog audio does sound more pro to me haha.

[@joshuakellerman4104]

You can't beat Neatvideo.

[@theqazman]

Yep

[@user-nq4bv9pr2g]

?, link is weard

[@lilvartdesign]

WinX video converter came out with a new WinX AI version with a new gen AI video enhancer. I found it very useful. First I run the raw footage thru it, than polish it with the resolve noise reduction. I separate the luma and chroma and I push up the spacial NR high 😁 So the naugty little bugs at least stop moving. The thing I didn't find solution for is the light green pixels that remains back and I can't kill them. 🤔 may if you wouldn't mind to talk about them if you know what about I talk 😁. Anyway I can reccomend the WinX AI for upscaling the footage too, I just did a 800x800 to 1600x1600 and that turn out pretty good, so I will put it into my film.😅

[@IamS.S.I]

👍👍

[@TomislavRupic]

You probably should have played more with Neat Video settings since it introduced some really ugly bending on her leg and walls...

[@theqazman]

I don’t see any bending on my end or I should’ve played more with it so that’s just given make sure that your quality is set to 4K and if you still see banding it’s probably either the device you’re watching it on KZbin compression

[@TomislavRupic]

@@theqazman I am talking about 16:04, shot is pretty much ruined...

[@Docfly62]

You should manually set DR NR to use the same "flat area" that Neat "found" to see if that would improve DR's results. Also I'm sure many are aware that the 3rd party options for any given app are usually better than it's built in function......Its just that they are always so dang expensive lol

[@pixelsimage]

It's these examples that kinda prove AI in these vendor apps is just a catch phrase. There is no real AI in play, just some tweaked decision logic that then has to repeat frame by frame.

[@theqazman]

I have to agree

[@dogusozel7360]

It's so sad that people are still confusing AI with machine learning.... Davinci Uses a neural engine which is a machine learning algorithym. But you guys keep saing "AI" is so dull... Please learn the difference. AI = Artificial Intelligence . There is nothing AI about this tool. It's just a better way to manage the database and use new algoryhms that's all.

[@theqazman]

I literally read the description from their user guide. So next time you're getting your keyboard ninja fingers ready do some research or better yet the video with your eyes open.

[@johnsaxz]

POV you watched the hook in 144p🥲🥲😂😂