DVO Clarity is the fifth generation noise and grain reducer from Digital Vision and is designed to automate as much configuration as possible while still producing the highest quality output. The new DVO Clarity algorithms are designed to preserve detail and keep the original image sharpness, while being artifact free.  

We recommend using Clarity on a per-shot basis. If you have a mixdown workflow, scene detect first and then apply the DVO tool.

DVO Clarity includes : 

•  Automatic grain characteristic analysis 

• An enhanced motion estimation engine 

• Detail enhancement 

• A new spatial-temporal filter 

Colour Mode

The drop-down list will default to the project setting for the input format. You need to set this control according to the material that you are working with. If the footage was shot. Auto can be used in the majority of cases, but you can force it to black and white if necessary.

Processing

The Processing group sets the basic processing parameters for the DVO Clarity algorithms. The Amount parameter sets the overall level of noise/grain reduction, while Aggressiveness sets how far and how strongly we attempt to reduce noise/grain taking motion into account. The higher the value the more motion we ignore.

Care should be taken because at higher settings there is an increased risk of introducing motion artifacts.

By default, we try to balance the quality of our output with the amount of processing time we use to produce it. The Speed vs Quality setting lets you adjust this trade-off between quality and processing time used.

Details

The Details group controls the level of detail preservation versus noise/grain reduction performed. The Base Level sets the overall bias used for preserving detail. When set to Auto (the default), the algorithm will adapt automatically. Setting this to Less or More will change the overall detail preservation bias such that :

• Less - try and preserve less detail
• More - try and preserve more detail

Given the Base Level, the Preservation parameter will fine-tune detail preservation. Higher settings preserve more detail. Sharpness levels can be selected and will have an overall effect on grain/noise reduction.

Detail Preservation Workflow

Analyse the shot and note the amount and size of any noise artifacts (e.g. grain size).  Based on this and the level of detail in the shot, we can choose settings for the Details parameters.