I ran into a pretty annoying problem with some fall footage recently. I shot a few clips around sunset and in a pretty dark forest, and they looked fine on my phone at first. Once I put them on my laptop, though, the noise was everywhere. The shadows had this grainy look, and I could even see random colored dots around the trees and leaves.
My first instinct was to just increase the brightness and sharpness. That was definitely the wrong move. Brightening the shadows made the noise much more obvious, and adding more sharpness basically made the grain sharper too. The footage technically looked “clearer,” but it looked worse.
What worked better for me was fixing the noise before trying to make the video sharper or more colorful. I started by making only small exposure adjustments, then used HitPaw VikPea’s Professional Denoise Model on the really noisy clips. I usually don’t push the denoise level all the way up. I preview a short section first and adjust it until the grain is reduced but things like leaves, branches, rocks, and faces still look natural.
One thing I found pretty useful is that different clips don’t necessarily need the same treatment. A slightly noisy clip might only need a little denoising, while a high-ISO sunset shot may need more. I also avoid judging the result only by how clean the whole frame looks. I zoom in on small details and compare it with the original. If the leaves start looking like they’re painted or people’s faces lose texture, I’ve gone too far.
After denoising, I’ll sometimes use another enhancement model or upscale the footage if the original clip is also soft. I find this works better than trying to do everything at once. Denoise first, then improve detail or resolution, and always check the preview before exporting.
For me, that’s probably the biggest lesson. AI enhancement works best when you don’t just turn everything up to maximum. Give the model a decent source, choose the model based on the actual problem, and make small adjustments instead of trying to completely “fix” the footage.
My fall videos definitely aren’t perfect, but at least the dark forest shots don’t look like they were filmed through a bag of sand anymore 
Curious if anyone else has a preferred workflow for cleaning up noisy low-light footage?