Neat Video 5.5. Still worth it?

I have Neat Video 4 which is outdated and on simple projects usually just use FCPX NR (although in the past it's been quite slow and not quite as effective as Neat Video). For larger projects I do an XML round trip to Resolve and do my color and NR there. 

Is Neat Video still relevant for FCPX compared to the native NR or has it improved enough to replace Neat Video?  I don't really want to pay $70 to upgrade for the few times I use it, but if it's indeed better and faster I will do so for the convenience.

Thanks.

Neat Video 5.5 has greatly improved performance over version 4.x. and works especially well on M1 Max and M1 Ultra machines. However Resolve temporal/spatial NR is also very good, just not as adjustable. I normally use Neat Video within FCP unless I'm already editing a project in Resolve.

Neat Video has some good tutorials here:  www.youtube.com/@NeatClips

That was my workflow as well.  I used Neat when in FCPX (if needed) but when Neat 4 stopped working I switched to FCPX NR.  When I *did* use Neat, I mainly used in automatic mode anyway. Since I only use FCPX for cutting, audio and sometimes titles, and do all my color in resolve for important projects, I've been too cheap to pay the additional fees and THEY have ben too cheap to run any sales, otherwise I would buy it again just for convenience.

Not a Resolve user, so I can't compare it well. I did get Neat Video about a year back, and I've been very impressed with the results. I have RAW video from my camera, and the de-noise is super important as the RAW bypasses internal noise filters of the camera. Neat Video decimates it.

I have had some issues with the filter crashing FCPX. But the workflow I use now is, edit my video, get everything ready, enable/add Neat video to the clips I need, move directly to export. This has no issues. Adding Neat to a clip and editing with it enabled (with scrubbing and such) has led to occasional crashes. So just a heads up.

thereverenddave wrote:

Not a Resolve user, so I can't compare it well. I did get Neat Video about a year back, and I've been very impressed with the results. I have RAW video from my camera, and the de-noise is super important as the RAW bypasses internal noise filters of the camera. Neat Video decimates it.

I have had some issues with the filter crashing FCPX. But the workflow I use now is, edit my video, get everything ready, enable/add Neat video to the clips I need, move directly to export. This has no issues. Adding Neat to a clip and editing with it enabled (with scrubbing and such) has led to occasional crashes. So just a heads up.

Thanks.  Yeah I used Neat Video for years.  Now I use resolve to color so not much.

One thing I learned from resolve that also applies FCPX.  Do your noise reduction last, but place it first in the directory.  That way the NR is done before anything else.  Sharpen is last. I never knew that before I started using Resolve and it makes a huge difference. Don't mess with Neat or any other NR until the very end.  You can apply it early, but keep it turned off until you're done grading or everything slows down. 

saw this thread in my googling and thought some of y'all could perhaps assist me. 

I've got a small YouTube channel about wildlife photography that's moving far more into the video side. 
I've got an m1 Mac, an iPhone 13 pro max that I vlog on and a Fuji Xh2s that I'm shooting on. I'm not using prores on the phone or camera, but that's definitely a possibility. I may also get a recorder at some point and could add prores raw to the workflow if needed. 

im using the Resolve free version and like the workflow, but debating if I should upgrade. The Speed editor is about 700 bucks after tax in Canada, but I'd like to get a way to scrub through video faster. I like Resolve's Media Manager option that would let me cut clips and then export the usable part in it's original format. I often shoot 4k 120 and have big files that I only want that one special moment from. 

So buying the hardware and staying with resolve and getting their noise reduction is a decent but expensive option. 

I also own FCP and while I don't like the workflow as much, I'm sure I can adapt and it does have some pros for sure. 

I tried the Neat demo that's been optimized for M1, but it's only rendering at 1080p which isn't much use to me for comparison. All of my clips are 4k, so the FCP NR looks better as of now (noticeably) but I'm assuming most of that is the resolution. 

So I'm trying to figure out what to do here. I don't plan on doing any major colouring work. I usually slap on a conversion lut, adjust my exposure and I'm happy with that. I want things to stay very natural, so I've had no preference in FCP vs Resolve on that front. 

Does it make sense to just suck it up, spend the money on Resolve and use their native NR?
Is Neat better than Resolve? Is it better than FCP?
If I stay in FCP, I can get used to using the magic taskbar, the Magic Mouse or even a Magic Trackpad to scrub through video faster. That is certainly cheaper than buying the peripheral, but I want quality and workflow to all factor in to the decision here. I try to make a lot of short videos (at least one a week for upload) but also work on longer form documentaries. 

The only thing that depending on the source material results in better quality NR is Topaz Video AI, where you'd need export the clips and render and reimport. Also, the speed is far worse in there and this is more applicable for problematic shots or restoration of old film scans, and even then, Neat is usually equally good.
And Neat is of course much faster.
So, if you want the best tool, use Neat.

Big YES

heymikeriley wrote:

I've got an m1 Mac, an iPhone 13 pro max that I vlog on and a Fuji Xh2s that I'm shooting on...I like Resolve's Media Manager option, that would let me cut clips and then export the usable part in its original format. I often shoot 4k 120 and have big files that I only want that one special moment from... I don't plan on doing any major colouring work. I usually slap on a conversion lut, adjust my exposure and I'm happy with that...Is Neat better than Resolve? Is it better than FCP?...I try to make a lot of short videos (at least one a week for upload) but also work on longer form documentaries.

Resolve Studio's temporal/spatial NR is roughly 80% as good as Neat Video, but Neat is better and somewhat faster (but still compute-intensive). By contrast, FCP video NR is a toy -- it's not remotely in the same league. 

I use both Resolve Studio and FCP daily and have Neat Video plugins for both. Resolve is excellent for color, but IMO for fast turnaround small jobs, FCP is better and quicker. Another issue is Resolve really hits the GPU hard, and if you have the original M1 with an 8-core GPU, that isn't much horsepower for Resolve. 

The Resolve Media Management function is conceptually nice, but historically it has been quite buggy and sometimes caused data corruption. It seemed to work better the last time I tested it but I would never trust it without very extensive testing.

Resolve is a "Swiss Army Knife" that can do almost anything but it is quite complex. The user manual is over 4,000 pages, well written and high quality. You don't have to know all that but it can be daunting to figure it out. OTOH there are lots of good tutorial videos -- both from Blackmagic themselves and 3rd parties.

that's really handy, thank you! I decided to stay with FCP and just purchased Neat 5.5 for the M1/FCP. 
Question, I think I've got it installed and running fine.. but once I click, 'apply,' what happens?

Neat closes and goes back to FCP, and my footage is suddenly almost unplayable. 
I'd assume that Neat is working in the background? surely it didn't apply the whole effect in a matter of seconds? 

Do I need to manually render the clip in FCP after that? 

Yes, it’s working. You don’t need to render that clip, unless you want to view it (play it) in real time. If you just export, the NR filter will be rendered during export.

My recommended work flow is: do all cutting and grading and get your video done. Grab the Neat filter and plop it on any specific clips that need it. Use the settings box that pops up with each one individually. Once those are in place, export the video.

The latest version of Neat Video for Apple Silicon is 5.5.7 (SR). Optimize it for your platform and media type by running the built-in performance optimizer. After applying the effect in FCP, open the Neat Video interface by pressing the "Options Window" button. The optimizer is in the Neat Video menu Tools>Preferences>Performance>Optimize Settings. It will test all possible combinations of CPU and GPU cores and recommend a setting. Accept that setting.
Even with optimization, 4k material in Neat Video or other similar effects will be slow on any hardware platform. This includes Resolve temporal/spatial noise reduction, Resolve magic mask, plugins like Digital Anarchy Flicker Free and Imagenomic Portraiture.
For this reason, apply compute-intensive effects as the last step in the finishing phase.

You can render the timeline to cache, but if you tweak a clip with a compute-intensive effect, it becomes unrendered. Even if you render it with CTRL+R or background rendering, when you finally get ready to export FCP will often not use those render files to expedite export. It will recompute all effects on any clip where Neat Video is applied. I suspect that is related to the "Ozone" Motion runtime engine which apparently does Just In Time compilation but not when certain conditions are met. The bottom line is timeline export if Neat Video is applied can be very slow, so that's another reason you don't want to apply it (or other similar effects) until late in editing.

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Neat ist still THE standard in the VFX industry world wide.
Basically nobody that professionally works on moving images for cinema and big budget productions would even think about using anything different.
So, you can be very relaxed and trust it, it's a good investment and it will work flawlessly way into the future.

Ditto; it is the best. Of all the NLEs, Resolve has the best built-in video NR, but Neat Video if used correctly is better and faster. Here is a comparison between Resolve temporal/spatial NR vs Neat Video. Note the Neat Video settings he used in this test were not optimal but it still did better than Resolve (which itself is very good).

The main thing about Neat Video is watch the tutorials, and also run the built-in performance optimizer. Do not be shocked that it's compute-intensive to run -- all similar plugins are, e.g, Digital Anarchy Flicker Free, Imagenomic Portraiture for Video, etc.

To various online forums and user reviews, Neat Video is still considered relevant for Final Cut Pro X (FCPX), despite the native noise reduction (NR) feature available in the software. By the way, I play various online games here such as poker, keno, baccarat.