NLmeans effect on detail

[YaBoyShredderson]

I know the stronger the denoising settings, the more detail is filtered out, but if something doesnt compress as well as i want, i would rather denoise than reduce RF/bitrate.

I did some testing with the luke cage season 1 bluray, as the marvel netflix shows are know for being overly noisy, probably cos its artifical. Without denoising, it was like 95% the original size, so not even worth compressing, but with NLmeans ultralight preset film tune, it was about 45%. Much more reasonable, and much closed to the 35% average i got with other tests ive ran on the custom preset i use.

I ask this question cos the image wasnt noticably different to the encode without the denoiser. Not just in terms of detail, but also the noise itself, yet it had a very positive effect on bitrate.

So if this is the case, is it safe to leave it on? Nlmeans ultralight film? As i dont want to have to test everything i encode to see how it would benefit, especially as other stuff i have encoded didnt compress so well either, but were much better with nlmeans even tho they werent particularly noisy in the first place.

[Woodstock]

"Safe" is a relative term... It's not going to make your encodes blow up, so, in that way, it's "safe".

But it will slow your encodes down, because it is not the fastest denoise filter.

[YaBoyShredderson]

"Safe" is a relative term... It's not going to make your encodes blow up, so, in that way, it's "safe".

But it will slow your encodes down, because it is not the fastest denoise filter.

Safe as in these setting wont comprimise sources that dont need it. I dont want it reducing a noticable amount of detail in a source that would compress just fine without it.

[mduell]

No, it's not safe in that sense like decomb is. It will denoise all sources you apply it to.

[YaBoyShredderson]

So what is a good setting to use? I read something talkng about the old denoising setting, that said temporal denoising is safe as it was basically ignore non noisy sources, but nlmeans is a better denoiser. Is there anything i can put into the custom settings to get a similar effect? I have no idea how any of the custom settings work so i just stuck to the preset.

[mduell]

The lightest preset that achieves the effect you desire, with a tune appropriate for your content.