MotionDSP Releases vReveal – CUDA-Based Video Enhancer

It’s no secret that NVIDIA is trying hard to push their CUDA technology, but while it might be the next-best-thing where computing is concerned, there hasn’t been much reason for people to be excited. The past year has been quite good to the company though, with many partners finally releasing applications that take advantage of CUDA, and GPGPU in general. The most prominent was Badaboom, a video encoder.

Last fall at NVISION though, another application they showed off was from MotionDSP. Their vReveal software, which also uses CUDA, implements “CSI-style” (that term needs to die) technology to improve your video in various ways. Low-light? Shoddy image quality? Need a video larger? Too much shaking? These are just a few of the things that vReveal tackles, and by taking a look at their samples, it seems to do a fine job.

What makes this product interesting is two things. First is the price, of $50. Advanced video fixer-uppers normally cost into the hundreds. Second, it’s simple to use… almost too simple. But given the audience its targeted for, it pretty much has to be. Because it runs on the GPU, through CUDA, the process is supposed to be five times faster than what a CPU would be capable of. Pretty bold claims, but believable given what we’ve seen before.

With vReveal, consumers can dramatically improve the quality of videos captured by cell phones, digital cameras and other handheld devices. It uses familiar one-click touch-up tools to stabilize, brighten and sharpen flawed videos. It has the unique ability to increase detail in low-resolution videos and to remove video “noise,” such as graininess and pixelation. The application can even capture print-quality still images from enhanced videos.