The Plugin Panacea Problem in Post

There was a project I was editing a while back where the cameras operator had to shoot in a noisy environment. As I was screening the footage I came across a conversation between the camera op and the client. The client expressed a concern about there being too much machine noise in the room. To which, the camera op replied, "It's ok, there's a plugin that can remove that."

Yeah, they actually said that to the client. I couldn't believe it.

General rule of thumb: Never promise a client that a plugin will magically fix something. Instead, tell them there's a plugin you can use to try and fix the problem, but that there's no guarantee until you try.

This was not an isolated incident. I've worked with multiple camera operators, more so in recent years as plugin tech has significantly improved, that believe plugins are a magical panacea that allow them to be a bit fast and loose with how they shoot.

It's become a rebranded, "We'll Fix It In Post!"

So, for this article, I am going to offer some food for thought to producers, directors and shooters on why you should shoot as if there were no plugins. Granted, sometimes things happen that are out of anyone's control, but I'm talking about those times where discipline and technique is thrown out the window because of plugin dependence. There's something to be said about working like there is no safety net.

Noisy Audio

Noise reduction plugins are quite impressive. But to effectively remove background noise without any residual artifacts to the main audio, there are finite parameters.

Consistent background noise, like an air conditioner running uninterrupted, is a lot easier to remove than say wind noise where the wind ebbs and flows. The plugins work best when they can lock into a fixed sound pattern. If the background noise is changing in consistency and volume, then the plugin has to work harder in compensating and that's when you start to get artifacts. A prime example is audio that starts to sound watery or tinny.

In the case I mentioned earlier, the room had multiple machines running which caused overlapping noise patterns that caused the plugin's algorithm to constantly shift it's approach and negatively impact the main audio. The camera op did not record room tone of the background noise which could have helped in creating a profile for better combatting the problem. But with all the overlap it was questionable. Another concern was that the audio levels for the interview were set a bit too low which resulted in gain noise when boosting the audio to proper levels. That's a whole other problem child.

Another example is echo. There's a misconception that it's easy to remove echo from audio. That is not the case. There are many suggested workarounds for removing echo from a track but I haven't found one that successfully removes echo. Please let me know if you find one. So if you're shooting in a bouncy room, what you hear is what you'll have to live with.

Remember, viewers can be forgiving of bad video but bad audio sucks them out of that viewing experience.

Warp Stabilizer

This is one of my favorites, and I say that with equal admiration and sarcasm.

To be fair, stabilizers have seen some immense progress, with Resolve having one of the strongest ones out there. I've used stabilizers with great success to clean up shaky footage.

But.......there are limits.

I had someone tell me once how Hollywood directors are always stabilizing their shots and this person felt that they didn't have to worry about getting steady shots because of that fact. What I wanted to say to this person is that there is a big difference between a seasoned Hollywood shooter who may have had a bit of shake and a run and gun shooter with a handful of years under their belt that has little concern for steadiness.

Even the sturdiest stabilizer will crap out if you're super shaky or moving all over the place. The plugin will still stop the shake but what you'll get is a blown up image where the edges are being stretched in all directions trying to keep up with all the unsteadiness. You literally see the plugin struggling to keep the image steady during playback. At that point, the shot is useless and valuable edit time is being eaten up trying to fix something that could have been prevented.

Noisy Video

Correcting an underexposed shot can result in grainy video noise. There's only so much that can be cleanly recovered from the shadows when boosting those levels.

There is an amazing plugin I've used that effectively gets rid of that grain a majority of the time. But, it's a processor intensive plugin. Once you apply the plugin and analyze the footage, your NLE will slow down and the timeline will struggle while playing. Unless you have a super jacked up, big budget, computer.

So, what happens is that you're forced to render the sequence, which takes a lot of time. And if you decide to go back and make a tweak, you'll have to do a long re-render. At that point you are losing valuable edit time.

Keying Plugins for Green Screen

There are some hard and fast rules when it comes to shooting with green screen. They exist for a reason.

There are incredible keying plugins out there for when you don't shoot properly. But they require time and work to tweak and refine the key to a point you're getting a clean pull. Then there are the render times.

And sometimes there are conditions that they can't successfully clean up.

So before you shoot green screen. Make sure you study the essentials on how to set up and shoot it properly.

Thanks for reading. See you next article.