I'm looking for video software that can remove light noise from video. Either free or free trial. I found one program so far but it doesn't perform like I though it would.

You might give VirtualDub a try. It's free and has quite a few plugins available. I don't know if it will give you the results you're looking for, but it's worth taking a look at.

I have that, but not quite what I can use. virtualdub has so many different plug ins it seems a bit bulky for me.

In the meantime I'm trying out vreveal (not a typo). It's fitting the bill so far. But has a $50 price tag after the trial and not sure it's worth That much. I'd spend $20 for it though.

Thank you for the reply coreybv

I always thought that VirtualDub was pretty streamlined, particularly if you're not worried about any audio component with your footage. The trick is to just use the one filter you need and ignore all the other features.

As long as you have it on your computer already, it might be worth playing around with a bit. It's been awhile since I used it, but I've had good luck removing noise from video by running it through the various blur plug-ins with very low settings. There's also a de-noise filter that "sounds like" it should do what you want, but in my experience I was never able to get it to do anything other than add even more noise.

From your other thread it sounds like budget is a consideration for you. It may be worth a couple hours of experimentation with the free stuff if it means you don't have to drop fifty bucks on something else.

Just for fun, I did a little playing around with VirtualDub. I recorded a short video with an old, crappy webcam I have laying around that produces noisy video, then applied the following filters:

blur more
motion blur
temporal smoother (with the slider set to "1")

This removed nearly all of the noise from the video.

You might give that a try if you have time to experiment a little.

Thank you. That helped quite a bit. However it also removes faint stars in my trial runs. I adjusted contrast and brightness, but can't seem to bring the faint stars back without bringing some noise back. Is there anything that can add or enhance highlights (stars)? Been going through the options.

I really appreciate you taking the time to help on this.

The problem I think you're going to run into is how can the software tell that one bright pixel is a star and a different bright pixel is video noise.

Off the top of my head, you might eliminate the two blur filters and try it with just the temporal smoother. My thinking is that the noise sort of dances around, while the actual stars should remain in the same spot from frame to frame and not get wiped out.

I should have a little time to experiment later, but give that a shot in the meantime.

I think I got a pretty good balance with this test video with just brightness and contrast. Added a touch of sharp as well. This is just as good as that vreveal software. (tested same video there as well) Thank you very much coreybv.

Glad you got a result your satisfied with.

Another thing to remember with virtualdub is that you can get dramatically different results using the same filters, but in a different order.

I'm curious what would happen if you cranked up the brightness and contrast before piping the video through the smoother and blur filters. If you got the stars bright enough, the blurring might not knock them out.

Just an idea. Don't be afraid to experiment. You might be surprised at the results you can get with a bit of trial and error.