Performance
Apparently nVidia partnered with MotionDSP to create this software, and their name is all over it. The idea is that if you use specific nVidia graphics cards you’ll be able to get a much faster render because the load is shared between the processors and the graphics card. While the constant nVidia branding feels a bit like banner ads, I’m sure the boost in rendering speed is more than marketing hype. Unfortunately I don’t have an nVidia graphics card (not that I have anything against them – they make great hardware!) so I wasn’t able to test out this feature.
Regardless, rendering speed on my 2.9GHz AMD Dual Core machine with 3.25GB of RAM was pretty fast. I’ve run various noise reduction and stabilization programs in After Effects over the years, and they always seem to take forever to render. With vReveal, a 2:45 clip processed with stabilization, noise reduction, auto contrast, and sharpening took 25 minutes to render. While that might seem like a lot, try doing something similar with AE plugins and see what kind of render times you come up with. I guarantee they won’t take less than twice that time!
A side-by-side comparison of vReveal-processed footage, taken with a Canon still camera. The video on the right side was cleaned, sharpened, auto-contrasted, and stabilized.
Value
I think the regular price for this software is $49.99, although when I went to their website to buy it, the current price is $39.99. Either way, this is a total bargain! To get this level of video enhancement you’d have to purchase After Effects for $700; it includes a de-noiser, color-correction tools, and a motion tracker, none of which are remotely as user-friendly as vReveal. Or you could buy a bunch of plugins for your video editing program, but again, they’re not going to be as cheap, and probably won’t be as easy to use. At the very least, with vReveal you get a program that will take your videos and export them for YouTube in a format that guarantees you high quality playback without having to mess around with codec settings in your editing program. This alone is worth the cost, since I’ve searched for hours looking for the best export settings for HQ or HD videos in YouTube. vReveal does it with one click of the mouse!
Another side-by-side comparison of very low-quality footage processed with vReveal. This video was taken with a Blackberry Curve.
Final Comments More and more people are shooting video on their cell phones and still cameras and wanting to share it as soon as possible with friends and family via YouTube and social networking sites. vReveal caters to this market niche in a user-friendly, low-cost manner that other software manufacturers have been slow to exploit. If MotionDSP can continue to update vReveal so that it addresses the newest, most bleeding-edge limits of consumer technology, instead of being one step behind the curve, I think they have a chance of being the go-to tool for what is shaping up to be a really exciting decade for user-produced media content.
Ease
of Use
10.0
Depth
of Options
5.0
Performance
8.0
Value
vs. Cost
10.0
Overall Score
8.3
Ryan Graham is the director of Livelihood, a critically acclaimed ultra-low budget zombie comedy. He also runs 37.5 Productions, a post production company specializing in giving a Hollywood sheen to independent films. In his spare time he is the lead guitarist for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad.
