Quote:
Originally Posted by volksjager
video-soap. is that alone worth switching?
|
It depends.
VideoSoap is only really good at removing grain from older VHS tapes, using an 18% setting on the Salt-and-Pepper filters. The S&P had another name, too, in later versions of ATI MMC before it was dropped. I don't recall both names off-hand*. I think it's written in the ATI AIW MPEG guides. It's good for those when you want to pre-process somewhat grainy video into MPEG format directly.
In recent years, I tend to only use it when converting very grainy tapes to high bitrate MPEG-2. I'll further filter the video in
VirtualDub or Avisynth. With low-cost work, this is one way to offer some NR without being time-consuming (and therefore costly), and some customers opt for this.
VideoSoap is just one of several tools you can use in your workflow. I'm not a purist, meaning I insist ONLY on uncompressed or lossless, NR in software only, etc. Whatever method looks good, and does not harm quality, is one that I'm willing to use. And sometimes VideoSoap comes in handy.
Most of the time, it's not used.
* I'll remember to look at the alternate filter name when I do the 9600 comparison.
