VideoK - 1.3.5

Boy, this is an odd one. First, I'm well aware of the need for some decent denoising in the Quicktime world. I often have to boot up VMWare so I can use Windows video processing utilities like AVIsynth to clean up my video before I do my encoding. Denoising does do wonders for compression, and I would not do web video without it if I had a choice. A decent alternative on the Mac side would save me a lot of time and trouble.

I can't see myself using this program, though. FIrst of all, its interface is bizarre and wonky, full of bad English and nonstandard interface choices. The installer even forces you to add the program to your dock, which is just not cool. There's also a stunningly useless info window, that tells you the file type of your input file (gee thanks, couldn't tell THAT from the file name!) and its source aspect ratio. (No mention of its frame rate, compression format, or anything useful.) There are no settings, other than Quicktime's standard export options. The program also handles 4:3 aspect ratio strangely, resizing everything to 16:9 for display.

As for its output, I tested it with a noisy direct-from-camera h.264 clip, and exported using one-pass h.264 at medium setting. (I would never use Quicktime's h.264 codec for web, but it was just a test.) The file size was quite a bit smaller than doing the same directly from Quicktime Player: 9.6 megs rather than 12.3. The video quality was very slightly softer and blockier, but I really had to strain to notice a difference.

The thing is, there's no point to making this a program at all. The filter itself might be quite useful, if it simply acted as a Quicktime filter that one could check during export. That way it might be used directly from Final Cut Pro or another program without an intermediate step. Having its own interface limits its usefulness, and THIS interface is just a liability. For a program that already has limited utility, this just has too many problems to be useful. Sorry, I'm sticking with my Windows-based solution.