Is Noise Reduction Making Your Videos Worse?

RAW video benefits from noise reduction. However, because denoising can end up softening the image, we’ve got to determine whether or not to add sharpening and if so, how much. In this video, we test drive Final Cut Pro’s built-in noise reduction software. This is one aspect in post where it is really advisable to examine beforehand how YouTube compression is affecting the look of the footage. I dislike grainy footage, so I’ll probably choose to set noise reduction to ‘medium’ and not add any sharpening – that is, until I ditch ProRes RAW altogether and permanently switch over to DaVinci Resolve for its vastly superior HDR grading tools.