5 ways to denoise a video

In today’s world, the quality of digital product such as photos and videos increase day by day, prompting us to create our content crystal clear and keep it that way. Of course, different kinds of effects and filters are great, and something called “noise” is one of them, but sometimes it is actually unwanted and makes our footage less likable. What is noise, or denoising, anyway? Well, instead of clear video, it’s something quite different – the footage looks grainy, sometimes excessively, and makes our eyes hurt, or simply, more difficult to see what’s going on on the screen. And if you didn’t decide to use a noise effect, then from where does it appear?..

Noise means a mix of different variations of brightness or color information in the shot. It is likely to show up when there is a low light, and/or when the video is taken with small sensors such as smartphones and action cameras. It works as follows: if someone tries to compensate for low-light settings with gain and ISO, more noise is produced.

But, as our readers already know, almost nothing is ever impossible to solve. There is a way to get rid of this annoying grain, and it is called, as pretty obvious, denoising. Hence, denoising in image and video production is used as a technique to take footage from grainy to crystal-clear. And, as you may already agree, it improves a viewer’s quality of experience. And how does this happen? - There are varied techniques, and each of them uses different mathematical and statistical models.

What is considered a good noise reduction? The technique is successful when it suppresses noise effectively in uniform regions; preserves edges and other characteristics, such as fine details and textures; and provides a visually natural experience.

and here you will learn 5 ways, as in 5 software to denoise a video. We’ll touch upon the following ones: Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Movavi Video Editor. But, we are not limited to these ones, so maybe there is one more you could use? You’ll find out in the article!

Noise that appears as unwanted grain or artifacts in the video image can be removed in Final Cut Pro pretty easily, you just have to follow the little steps for it. Keep in mind that Final Cut Pro is not eligible for PC, this editor is only available for Mac (but Windows users, tune in for the editors functioning on PC’s!)

So, you have your grained footage, which you already chose to denoise, and for which you will need a video reduction effect.

First, you will need to open Final Cut Pro and import abovementioned video. Select this clip in the timeline,

and position the play head in a way that the clip appears in the viewer, that is, on the big screen - for you to see well.

Click the Effects button in the top-right corner of the timeline, or, to use the shortcut, press Command & 5.

In the Effects browser, select the Basics category in the list of Video effects on the left, then select the Noise Reduction effect. For 360° clips, select the 360° category, then select the 360° Noise Reduction effect.

And you will need to do one of the following:

Drag the effect to the timeline clip you want to apply it to, or double-click the effect thumbnail to apply the effect to the selected clip.

When the effect is applied, Final Cut Pro analyzes the clip for noise, so you might need to wait for a little while the process is complete and only then see the result.

Interesting tip you can remember is that if you are using several effects to your video clip, then adding Noise Reduction as the first effect would guarantee the best results for you. So, Mac users, you can start denoising your videos in Final Cut Pro now!

Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application… Pretty intense, right? This very software has endless powers, and one of them is, you guessed correctly – denoising the video! So, how are we going to do that in this monster of the industry?

Sometimes what’s annoying about this kind of programs is that you need plugins, so let’s try to find a way to achieve our desired result without using anything external.

So, first of all (as in all cases!) import your video into After Effects. Then, you will need to find Effect in the menu, and find: Noise and Grain. There, you will choose Remove Grain and click on it.

On the left side of the program layout, the Effects Control will be opened. Now, you see viewing mode, where you need to change Preview to Final Output.

So, this will be the video with Preview checked:

Which will look like this when Final Output is checked:

Somewhat different and looking better, right?..

By the way, you can watch the whole process video here!

Adobe Premiere Pro is one of the most and sophisticated video editor. So, of course, there is a way to reduce noise in this software as well, and this can be reached using effect called Median.

First of all, you add your footage to the Timeline in Premiere Pro and then go find the Effects Panel, where Median can be found. You need to drag and drop the Median effect to your video clip.

The next step is to make sure that adding the effect to the grainiest parts of the clip, which can be done using masks. So, in the Effects Control panel, you’ll need to select the mask shape for your clip – you can either choose rectangle, circle, or pen tool. With the latter you can move the Mask around the screen and resize it to cover the area.

And if you Change the Feather setting to 100, the effect will not have a very visible edge and some smoothness will cover for it.

You will need to repeat the process with more than one mask, if you would like to have covered all of the grainy area of your shot.

Lastly, you’ll need to adjust the effect settings to reduce the noise.

The Median effect doesn’t actually take away the graininess, it just blurs it. You’ll need to experiment with the Radius settings until you are happy with the result.

When it comes to DaVinci Resolve, the process is somewhat different in the free version of it. So, first of all, off course, you add your footage into the timeline. Then,you are going to find the fusion tab underneath the timeline panel.

You will see MediaIn1 and MediaOut1, you click on MediaIn1, which will ensure the scene appears in the first viewer – and MediaOut1 by default is appearing in the second. So, now you stay on MediaIn1, hit shift+spacebar, and find the option which says: Remove Noise (RN) and then click Add, which adds the Remove Noise1 node. On the top right corner you will find Inspector, and if you click on it, you will see all the properties you can modify.

After going only into the second viewer, and in the top bar we can find channel icons. We open it and click on red, which makes the footage black and white for a while. Then, we go back to the Inspector, increase Softness Red and Detail Red.

This removes much grain from the red channel. Then we repeat the same for green, as well as for blue channel. Once you finish, you go to the same channel button in the bar and change it to “back to color”. So, the footage will have its colors back and you will see that it has become clearer, compared to the first viewer.

You can play around with the Chroma and Luma channels in the Inspector, if that is something you have ever had experience with!

In Movavi Video Editor, it is pretty straightforward – unlike DaVinci Resolve, of course! So, getting to the point: the first thing you need to do is Entering the Edit Mode. In order to achieve it, you’ll need to click the Edit button next to the file you want to adjust or select Adjustments in the Tools tab.

After this, you will be able to select the Noise removal option, and then, move the Noise level slider to reflect the amount of noise you can see in the preview. The more noise you need to remove, the higher the Noise level, and vice versa.

When you're finished removing the noise, click Apply, but in case you need to remove noise from several files, select Apply to all files, which ensures the same noise level will be applied on all your files there.

Lastly, of course, Wondershare Filmora X offers the same option as well. The steps are ase follows: You need to go to the Effects panel and type: “Smart Denoise”. Then, right-click on the video and choose Edit Properties.

This will make sure you go inside the Smart Denoise, where you can change opacity of the clip, threshold and radius.

You should reduce Opacity until you are satisfied with the result. Then, you can use the box next to Smart Denoise in order to see the scene before and after noise and grain removal.

So, that’s it! – We learned how to remove/reduce noise and grain from the videos, using several video editors. So you might as well start making your video clips look better right away!