Help (Or, the opportunity to learn something new)

Jim Brennan

Jim Brennan

VHS Member Old Skool
I am editing a video from a 2 camera shoot, intercut with other footage. About 95% of the video will be something other than the B Camera. But at some point I may need to use it. It's a wide shot of a family of five, and there is a mic cable that runs across the floor.

I am just wondering if anyone has had any luck getting rid of something like that. The shot is completely locked down the whole time, so it never moves.

I Have FCP 5 and Motion. No AE or anything like that.

Any takers?
 
1195355550.jpg


The shoot was a pain. i didn't know until I got there that I would be shooting 5 people at once. The room was big, but barely big enough for the set up. The lighting was the best I could do under the circumstances. Not my best work for sure. I'm hoping to use this camera's footage as little as possible. The A camera stuff is mostly singles and 2-shots and looks better.

Anyway, you can see the mic cable in the botom right of the frame. Luckily we had the 4th mic, but I didn't notice the cable because I didn't look at that feed once we set up since it was locked down. I just stayed on the A camera.

So, there it is.
 
Last edited:
dicks, that sucks.

I can only offer a possibility. take a frame grab such as this one and bring to Photoshop. using the stamp tool and some patience, you should be able to cover up that bad boy. Export your clip to AE and take your doctored portion of the photo and place over in the corresponding spot. This great since the shot doesn't move, so you don't have to worry about adjusting your frames in AE.

There might be a better way, but this is what i'd do.
 
Wouldn't even stress- most people won't even notice and this can also be minimized with Color by dimming down the area with the cord.

Noah
 
To bad no AE

To bad no AE

AE comes with a tool called CC wire removal. Its designed for what it says, removing suspension wire, but it might do a good job on blending out that. Since its locked down it shouldn't be too hard. I would have to second option one, clone it out or duplicate the layer and offset it so you have a similar pattern north or south of the cable then matte out the displacement and feather the matte so it fades into the original. Since you dont have AE I am sure you can do that in another program, I am not Mac familiar but doesnt FCP pro come bundled with a proggie that does compositing. what do you use FCP, Avid, Vegas?
 
Jim Brennan said:
Don't have AE.

Really kicking myself. Such a newb mistake.
Click to expand...
Do you have Photshop? PS is a 'must have' in any edit suite. Handy for prepping logo's, creating mattes and helping to fix the occasional problem like this.
 
Last edited:
I have Photoshop and use it al the time for stills. I have never gotten the hang of using it with FCP though. Maybe it's time I started to try a little harder.

Noah, I agree, but it bugs me. My wife and I were joking that since it runs by the wheelchair most people might think that's what it's for.
I'm going to try the matte, just to see if I can pull it off. It's not life and death for this shoot, but it's a skill I need to get a handle on.

Thanks guys. Any further advice is welcome.
 
SO I made the matte and it looks good as a still, but I'm having a hard time getting it to line up in the timeline. I am guessing that since this footage is from an xl-2 shooting 16x9 and I am working in a 4x3 world (the other footage was shot on a DVX with letterbox, so its still 4x3), that is what's causing the problem. Anybody else have this issue? I know there must be a mathematical way to do this, since lining it up by hand isn't working so great. The difference in aspect ratio affects the size, position and angle of the matte.
 
Yes, you'll just have to finesse it. Chances are it's interpreting your still as square pixels and you want it as either .9 or 1.2 pixel aspect ratio. Changing interpretation or changing the width to 90% or 120% might help.
 
I changed the width to 120% and it was almost perfect. I kicked it over to left by 0.5 and it looks great.

Thanks everybody.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top