SOLUTION Davinci Resolve Corrupt Frames with Neat Video Noise Reduction

[Zwhaler]

I have found a solution to a most annoying yet undocumented problem when dealing with ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ footage round-tripped from Final Cut Pro X to Davinci Resolve back to FCPX with the Neat Video Noise Reduction filter then applied. In short, the noise reduction filter would cause certain frames, up to hundreds of them in a 20 minute video, to look like this:



This issue was a pain to fix as you had to duplicate your video track and layer it on top of the corrupted frames one at a time. I figured out that even if your camera shoots in 4:2:2 color sampling, if you export unedited footage from your NLE in the ProRes 4444 codec, import into Resolve (I'm using version 9.1), apply your grades, and export as ProRes 4444, import resulting files back into Final Cut, and apply the Neat Video noise reduction filter, there aren't any corrupt frames.

From here you can export finished project as whatever you like, although I would suggest first converting back to 422 before compressing with h.264 as you will reduce filesize without reducing quality IF your camera uses 4:2:2 or lower color sampling ratio. I hope this helps and I'm using Final Cut Pro 10.0.7 on Mountain Lion 10.8.2. I hope this article helps people as I searched for it and could not find it, and after finding a solution wrote it myself!

[Borntorun]

Thanks for this - I will try it. I got around by importing the clip into FCP7, apply the neat video NR filter, and export the clip before reimport into FCPX.

[Zwhaler]

Just letting people know that this completely fixes certain clips, but on other longer clips there might be one bad frame or even two or three. With 422 I had too many to count with 4444 I had much better results with three bad frames at most on longer videos, and like I said some were completely fixed, others had only one. So basically QC your footage.

[Zwhaler]

Update. Here is an official post from Neat Video about this topic, FYI the glitches appear in any video this is applied to in 10.0.6 and 10.0.7, not just DaVinci Resolve exported footage.

In FCP X 10.0.6*and*10.0.7: FCPX 10.0.6 and 10.0.7 (unlike 10.0.5) and Motion 5.0.5 and 5.0.6 have a bug, which produces corrupted frames (incorrect colors, inverted, mirrored, etc.) when certain types of effect plug-ins are used. Not only Neat Video, other effect plug-ins too, including even some of the effects developed by Apple. We have informed Apple about that, they are working to fix the bug in FCPX / Motion. Before a solution is found, we recommend to postpone updating to 10.0.6 or 10.0.7 and keep 10.0.5 for the time being.

Source: http://www.neatvideo.com/bugs.html

[Artful Dodger]

That really sucks. One more thing added to the list of issues I've encountered with updates to Apples Pro Apps I guess on a side note I haven't had any issues concerning the Graphics cards some are having after the updates on certain models.

Thanks for keeping the loop open and going