noise reduction - use it or not ?

[maitmk]

hey all.

i've been wondering, if it would be a good idea to use noise reduction on my video footage. I understand that it is good on titles and stuff - makes them look smoother. But doesn't it reduce the overall quality and sharpness of the video ??

When do YOU use it?

it's a newbie question, i know, just tell me what u think, ok ?

[techno]

well, with the videos I have done, it does improve the quality, smoother and sharper. It depends on how you encode it and what settings you used and what the original source is like.

Techno

[maitmk]

i tried encoding my footage in Premiere with Divx 3.11 (fastm) with bitrates 1200 and 2500, but the encoded video still looked noisy.

I also tried the "noise reduction" feature in Premiere's special processing but that started to use increasingly more memory ( up to 2 GB ) and crashed finally. So i could not use that.

Should i re-encode the video encoded in Premiere with some other software to achieve smoother and better video quality ?
I thought that re-encoding any video does nothing but lowers the quality - am i wrong ?

[benderman]

I use the "dynamic noise reduction" of VirtualDUB for every video I capture with my WinTV. Even good TV-quality has still some noise and the "flickering" needs a lot of bits. If you use the noise reduction the video looks better even with a lower bitrate. For DVD-video it's not very usefull to use noise reduction except some old movies that were not digitaly remasterd.