Blotchy Splotchy pixelated video (potentially not Premiere issue)

[ANT517]

I've been using premiere for some time now, so excuse me if I sound like I'm new here. I've been having this issue on a project that has a bunch of old footage on it ( before it was shot on a t4i back in 2015) {the files are .mov) and I've been struggling with this edit off and on for over a month because of this issue. So because the footage is so old, I've been trying to denoise it using neat video and I've used neat video on some newer blackmagic and A7s footage and it worked great on those. However, as I'm trying to remaster some of this older footage to maybe bring some new life into it, I'm finding that when I try to denoise it, I'm getting these blotchy splotchy, artifacts and pixelation as seen in the pictures included. These splotches are seen in the preview files as well as the export afterwards, I'll include as much information as I can as well as what I've tried.


.MOV to start with it has been exported to (prores 422, h.264, h.265 , as well as converted to MP4 in handbrake) none of these have proven successfully to remove the splotchiness.


Also a few of these clips do not even have the denoiser from the video on them and they still have this blurry blotchiness.

I watched a ton of tutorials on how to use neat video and was pretty diligent and making sure I was using it correctly and still found the same results. As I've said, I've exhausted a lot of options over the past month trying to fix this issue.


Some of the other things that I've attempted to do to fix this including but not limited to:

-Clearing the system Cache a number of times (20+)

-Deleting the video preview files.

-Reinstalling neat video

-Updating my Nvidia drivers and swapping them between the art and gaming drivers

-Updating Windows

- converting the base footage

Another thing to note is the project file has been converted from a much older version of premiere. But I don't think that's the issue as I've exported the footage and re-imported said exported footage and the issues still remains.


Any help would be very much appreciated.

System stats below

i2900k
64gb ram
4080 strix
Win 11
Adobe cc all up to date.

[R Neil Haugen]

I think I'm seeing the effects of compression artifacting and perhaps image 'expansion' from original pixel dimensions. This is a very specialized thing to deal with. I know a few people who routinely handle this work process, of restoring older media, and it can be a right bugger puzzlement at times.

So I think looking around for digital restoration processing might be useful.