Help with Noisy Underwater Footage

[RidgeShark]

This has been a tough nut to crack. Raw source file is an interlaced DV:

https://mega.nz/#!a3oDDaCQ!ZdrZtQTqf0WikpNF_w2fZYEi1R27Wqh75aHQJVrvtOI

Footage is originally 24fps film, but this is an ancient VHS whose master was made on some ancient, laggy telecine equipment resulting in blended fields. QTGMC+Srestore(frate=23.976) works well. But as far as removing the grain/noise, I haven't been able to create a satisfactory mix of noise removal and detail retention. I've spent a couple weeks on it and feel like I've hit a dead end. Would really appreciate some fresh sets of eyes looking at it and making suggestions.

[johnmeyer]

The person you need to search out is Nick Hope. He sometimes visits this forum. He is an expatriate living in Thailand and has for the last fifteen years (or more) run an underwater video business:

Nick Hope Underwater Video (http://www.bubblevision.com/index.htm)

Nick Hope's YouTube Videos (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1C4AD42C17C72630)

As you will see, his work is top-notch professional stuff.

Years ago I helped Nick decrease the noise on some DV video he took. We corresponded in the old Sony Vegas forum which, unfortunately, is now moribund. I just tried to find our posts in the archived forum, but the search function they provide is awful. If I find it, I'll post it later.

[johnmeyer]

OK, at least one of our discussions about this was in this forum, not the Vegas forum:

Removing low-light noise/grain from DV (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=161771)

Nick originated this thread and it starts out: "I have quite a lot of underwater footage shot in low light with my Sony VX2000 3-CD DV camera with a lot of gain and so lots of noise/grain."

It should give you some ideas. It's an old thread so, unfortunately, most of the files that are linked to have long since been deleted.

[edit]Here is at least some of our discussion on the old Sony Vegas forum:

My Latest Denoising Tests (thanks Nick!) (https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/my-latest-denoising-tests-thanks-nick--84879/)

[edit #2]Since it's only been a few minutes since my last post, I'll simply edit this one instead of posting three times in a row. Here is a link to a zip file that has the original video along with several of my attempts to improve it:

Underwater noisy fish video (original + several denoising attempts) (https://www.mediafire.com/file/domqsu3ivlvtqan/LIBbatfish-orbicular1a.zip/file)

I can't remember now whether these were the exact files I uploaded. I think the "rev 6" version was the one I liked the best. Having said that, many people want to see ALL the noise disappear and I think that is why so many gravitate towards Neat Video. However, to my eyes, every demonstration I've seen of that technology ruins all the detail. You will certainly see that in the example included in the zip file.

What I now shoot for when denoising is to preserve virtually all the detail, and to make the remaining noise "look natural." I put that in quotes because it is a tough concept to define, but what I'm getting at is that many noise reduction techniques either destroy too much detail, or they leave you with noise that is of a totally different character than the random dot noise we are all used to, and that new noise is so artificial-looking that it calls attention to itself and is more annoying that what you started with.

.

[Mounir]

This is the best i can do
https://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2019/48/5/1575019115-new.jpg
original:
https://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2019/48/5/1575019111-og.jpg

Video: https://mega.nz/#!J9400YzK!0vyLJpqyi84UfIE4BflGvjb_V7dC-Q3tGu_ubzUufdk

[StainlessS]

You may get better results if first remove borders.