Dirt captured on footage

Arrik

Arrik

Well-known member
Hi all,

I recently shot a friend's wedding, where I had the opportunity to experiment with hvx/brevis shots since I had two cams/operators. Well, I got this nice slo-mo shot of the couple walking down the steps of the chapel with bubbles floating around. Was really happy with it, but what my crappy on-board monitor (varizoom) failed to display were two specs of dirt. The placement of these specs couldn't be worse. It comes off as a moving mole on my friend's face. Ruins the shot.

Any suggestions as to how I may attempt to fix this in post? I run fcp on a macbook pro.

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
Do you have photoshop CS3? Export using quicktime in a good quality you can then import the problematic video as a sequence and edit each frame individually to remove the dirt, by using maybe the clone stamp. You can export as a clip again...

For CS2 you can export a TIFF sequence and edit the TIFF files one by one in photoshop you can then import the Tiffs on FCP...

Just one suggestion....
 
Are you seeing these in HD or SD? Sometimes when I've shot on HDCAM I'll see a spec of dust come off as a dead pixel, but down converting to SD for a finished HD hides it.
 
Thanks for the quick replies guys.

My roommate has CS3. I'll try going the clone stamp method. Thanks Jazzx!

Patssle, I haven't checked to see if the SD downconversion hides the spec. I think it definitely would help. I'll still try the CS3 treatment but that's definitely good to know. I didn't even think about that...

Appreciate the help.
 
Yeah, figured that's what you meant. And that will eventually be what happens, since apple hasn't added any hd authoring to dvd sp. So I guess even I do a not-so-perfect job with Jazzx's suggestion, I'm sure the finished product will hide the flaws.

Thanks again.
 
So, yeah..... 41 seconds and 1000 frames? Damn, that's alot of frames to clone stamp.

Question. When exporting the clip as TIFF from fcp it does not give aspect ratio or resolution options. So when I open in CS2, each frame is set to 970x720. So, do I correct resolution to 1280x720 in CS2, or do I edit in CS2 as 970x720, save, then correct resolution in Quicktime to HD 1280x720 16x9 when I export the numbered image sequence back into a movie.

Basically, both give options to do so, but I'm wondering if either method is inferior in quality to the other. I'd rather the latter as it seems more convenient a task.

So far it's coming out nicely. I'll let you know how it turns out when I finish all frames....... maybe a year from now :)
 
you should not have to do this frame by frame, in fact it can be more distracting if your clone stamp moves around

if you are on FCP there's a free dirt removal plugin which you can get here
http://mattias.nu/plugins/

I'd try a google search for a similar free plugin for whatever you are on if not

if you are not on FCP and can't find a similar plugin for you NLE you can still do it manually and much easier than frame by frame in you NLE of choice
  1. make a small mask or matte that punches out the dust. Make it as small as possible, and now feather it for the soft edge. You do not have to track this or paint it frame by frame because the dust is in a fixed position ... it's attached to the lens, only the image behind the dust changes. Ok so now you have a black feathered hole where your dust was.
  2. put a copy of the clip on top of itself. for the version on bottom, delete the mask or matte filter you just used. Now your dirt reappears because it's peaking through the hole you've made in the top layer. Your image will look exactly like you had done nothing to it regarding the dirt as of yet.
  3. Now shift the bottom layer a few pixels in any direction, you've now filled in the hole in the top layer with cloned adjacent pixels from the bottom layer
by experimenting with feathering, the size of the hole, and how far and in which direction you slide the clip underneath, you can get rid of that bad boy

I've gotten rid of dirt and other junk and even a rip in window tint where light was shining through once using this technique
 
Damn. Thanks JDS. I am on fcp, so I'll try the plug-in. You are a life saver. I only invested 250 frames worth of stone clamping and spot healing, haha.

I actually tried a mask originally, but I tried to fill in the hole with a matching skin color and it was more of an eye sore than the dirt. Shifting makes alot of sense. Why couldn't I figure that out? (no need to answer :) )

However, I am on fcp, and will
 
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