Review of vReveal video enhancing software for cell phones

I recently started testing out a piece of Windows software called vReveal. Now why, you might ask, would I be telling you about this on a mobile tech site like MobileBurn.com? Well, the answer is that vReveal takes low quality video footage, such as that shot by many cell phones on the market, and spruces it up in a number of ways.
The software, at US$40, is not exactly cheap, and results vary greatly depending on the quality (or lack thereof) of the source video, but if you are looking to get the best possible video quality out of your phone, then read on.

MotionDSP is the company that makes vReveal, and it received an investment from video powerhouse NVIDIA. In fact, the vReveal software will take advantage of the inherent graphics capability of a PC's NVIDIA graphics card (or chipset), if it has one. MotionDSP says that vReveal analyzes multiple frames of video at one time to smooth out the jaggies, reduce camera shake, improve contrast and brightness, increase resolution, and remove noise.

The CLIQ shoots video at 352 x 288 pixels, the Bold at 480 x 352, and the DROID and S8300 at 720 x 480. The videos were all processed with vReveal's "one click fix" mode that applies a default set of settings. I did, however, add the image stabilization fix to the sample DROID video. It's worth noting that image stabilization costs you a bit of resolution, but that vReveal zooms the video when its is saved to keep the original pixel dimensions intact.
vReveal will save its enhanced versions of videos in a number of formats, including WMV, MJPEG AVI, uncompressed AVI, and even DivX AVI, if the DivX Pro software is installed. I saved the images out using DivX, since I had it installed and it creates smaller files. Image quality seemed to be pretty much the same when using WMV, though. While vReveal can upload videos directly to YouTube and FaceBook, I uploaded all the videos to YouTube manually. Surprisingly, the YouTube versions of the videos retained most all of the originals' traits, making them still viable for comparing before and after enhancement versions.
So how did this $40 piece of software perform? It does a great job of fixing dark videos and those with a lot of noise - like the Samsung S8300 video. Anybody that has ever used a phone to shoot a video or photo in a dark room will be familiar with the color specks and banding that vReveal does a great job of removing, and the increased brightness is also a huge improvement. The split-screen before and after view of the videos makes that much obvious, as you can see in the screen shots above.
When it came to videos shot in good lighting, however, the improvements are harder to notice, though still there. If you look at the tree branches, the sky, and the house siding in the enhanced Bold 9700 video, you will see the smoother, more natural look of the vReveal video - if you pay attention. The motion stabilization in the enhanced DROID video is fairly obvious, and you'll notice some generic smoothing in high contrast areas, like the top edge of the passing train cars. When it came to the resolution doubler feature that's on by default in low-res videos like those from the CLIQ, though, I saw no real benefit at all.
So the software works, that much is clear. Is it worth $40? That's going to be a judgment call that depends on your personal finances, how poor a job your phone does with video, and how often you shoot videos in bad lighting. While I personally like the software, I don't think that I would have purchased it with my own money if MotionDSP hadn't supplied me with a copy. If you are sitting on the fence, you can test out a trial version that imprints enhanced videos with a watermark, but is otherwise functional. More information is available at the vReveal website.

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ENHANCED VIDEO: