Removing a cord from the background?

J

jdkhanlian

Active member
I am trying to remove some cords from the background of a shot and I would like some advice. Does anybody know an efficient way to do this?

http://vimeo.com/35155723

I started using the clone stamp but found it rather tedious since the shot was handheld which resulted in the clone stamps needing to be adjusted every frame. Is there a better, more efficient way, to remove the cords using After Effects(combined with photoshop)? I also have another shot similar to this one, where I want to remove a boom pole, so I figured learning some more efficient AE techniques might pay dividends.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.
 
I would try creating a matte layer the same sampled color as the siding of the house, then mask it, feather the mask and animate it with keyframes. Otherwise, you're likely to drive yourself nuts with that shot. It'll eat the heck outta your ram so make sure to change your resolution to half while you're working and then change it back. Repeat for each piece of aluminum siding. The feathering is the key, and, of course, shaping it around your subject's head. You may need to do several such layers.
 
JoeRawlins said:
I would try creating a matte layer the same sampled color as the siding of the house, then mask it, feather the mask and animate it with keyframes. Otherwise, you're likely to drive yourself nuts with that shot. It'll eat the heck outta your ram so make sure to change your resolution to half while you're working and then change it back. Repeat for each piece of aluminum siding. The feathering is the key, and, of course, shaping it around your subject's head. You may need to do several such layers.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, but I need some help in understanding. Are you saying that I should put an off white solid layer (or maybe even a still frame to get the texture and shades of white?) and then mask a rectangular shape of one of the aluminum siding panels as it moves from frame to frame, while adjusting the mask around the actors body? I think this may work better, but I just want to see if this is what you are suggesting. Thanks.
 
jdkhanlian said:
Thanks for the tip, but I need some help in understanding. Are you saying that I should put an off white solid layer (or maybe even a still frame to get the texture and shades of white?) and then mask a rectangular shape of one of the aluminum siding panels as it moves from frame to frame, while adjusting the mask around the actors body? I think this may work better, but I just want to see if this is what you are suggesting. Thanks.
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Yes, precisely, but I would use just a plain color instead of the image for texture as your background is moving and the texture wouldn't look right, because it would be static (I think) but some variation of that.

I'm not guaranteeing it will work. That's just my go-to solution before trying to reinvent the wheel. =) I would put three hours into it and if it's not giving you results, it may be time for a new idea.

Joe
 
Also, try this:

Drop the shot onto a larger comp and stabilize it. (Comp large enough to keep the shot in the comp once stabilization makes it jump around).

Do whatever it takes for your wire removal on the stabilized plate. Could be much easier.

Link a null to the stabilized plate; create a camera that's close to the focal length you shot with; make everything 3d, and parent the new camera to the null.

Now, your footage is no longer stabilized - it's back to normal, and planted in one place in the comp. But your repair layers will follow the motion of the footage. Crop and render.
 
Ok, so I've tried both techniques and neither seems to be doing that great of a job, although I d0 appreciate the suggestions. Joe's suggestion, gives too flat of a texture to blend with the rest of the building which has a dirtier texture. And CC Simple Wire Removal works better on straight lines, rather than the curved ones which I have. I am going to try in Mocha AE to see if I can track the cords better and then replace them somehow, but I think it is going to be difficult with the main character moving in front of them. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Is this the kind of touch up that is going to take hours and hours of cloning to really make it look nice?
 
Michael Carter said:
Also, try this:

Drop the shot onto a larger comp and stabilize it. (Comp large enough to keep the shot in the comp once stabilization makes it jump around).

Do whatever it takes for your wire removal on the stabilized plate. Could be much easier.

Link a null to the stabilized plate; create a camera that's close to the focal length you shot with; make everything 3d, and parent the new camera to the null.

Now, your footage is no longer stabilized - it's back to normal, and planted in one place in the comp. But your repair layers will follow the motion of the footage. Crop and render.
Click to expand...

This is one serious technique. Have you done this with success before?
 
Michael Carter said:
Also, try this:

Drop the shot onto a larger comp and stabilize it. (Comp large enough to keep the shot in the comp once stabilization makes it jump around).

Do whatever it takes for your wire removal on the stabilized plate. Could be much easier.

Link a null to the stabilized plate; create a camera that's close to the focal length you shot with; make everything 3d, and parent the new camera to the null.

Now, your footage is no longer stabilized - it's back to normal, and planted in one place in the comp. But your repair layers will follow the motion of the footage. Crop and render.
Click to expand...

I might try the opposite- create a clean piece of the wall using photoshop / clone stamp.
Just one frame that will cover everything you need to cover for the whole shot- so it will have to be probably a little big bigger than you need for your first frame.

Then track the wall- and attach your patch to the track. You might then need to roto your dude out of the patch if it covers over top of him- which it probably will.

(basically I did that here, but the camera never moves so I didn't need to track it: http://youtu.be/PlEEi8TiL3E)
 
Renee said:
I might try the opposite- create a clean piece of the wall using photoshop / clone stamp.
Just one frame that will cover everything you need to cover for the whole shot- so it will have to be probably a little big bigger than you need for your first frame.

Then track the wall- and attach your patch to the track. You might then need to roto your dude out of the patch if it covers over top of him- which it probably will.

(basically I did that here, but the camera never moves so I didn't need to track it: http://youtu.be/PlEEi8TiL3E)
Click to expand...

The walls angle relationship to the camera is going to change slightly throughout this shot, so are you saying I make a flat photoshop file but put it 3D space and somehow track the wall? I've never done this before, but I think I saw a tutorial doing something like this once on videocopilot. This almost sounds like a planar tracking job for mocha, but unfortunately Mocha doesn't like it when something moves in front of your plane(i.e. guy's head), even though it can handle the plane going off screen.

By the way, nice work in that youtube clip.
 
Thanks!

Yeah - I'm not sure what I would try to track. It's a tricky shot.

You would need to track something on the wall in vaguely the same spacial plane as the piece you want to remove, and I would go for something that his head doesn't cross over. I think the very best tracking point is where the cord meets the line of the siding and makes an "X."
This happens four times- twice in the shadow and twice with the actual cord. One of these spots is not ideal, kind of obscured by his collar.

Also I would try for the corners of the windowsil.

I don't know Mocha- I would just use the tracker built into After effects. I would want to use a corner pin, but I don't know if those points I mentioned are exactly the same plane. Worth a shot tho!
 
jdkhanlian said:
Ok, so I've tried both techniques and neither seems to be doing that great of a job, although I d0 appreciate the suggestions. Joe's suggestion, gives too flat of a texture to blend with the rest of the building which has a dirtier texture. And CC Simple Wire Removal works better on straight lines, rather than the curved ones which I have. I am going to try in Mocha AE to see if I can track the cords better and then replace them somehow, but I think it is going to be difficult with the main character moving in front of them. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Is this the kind of touch up that is going to take hours and hours of cloning to really make it look nice?
Click to expand...

Hmmm. I'm sorry my way didn't help more. This is a tough one. Good luck with mocha, that's an amazing piece of software. Unfortunately, I've never used it, myself.
 
mocha subtract

mocha subtract

in mocha: draw a mask around the dude, track it, in layer properties Blend mode change "Add" to "Subtract". Press the lock button and the next to it (looks like a sun) Keep this layer at top and mocha will not track anything inside this mask. Now track the window.
 
JonMar said:
in mocha: draw a mask around the dude, track it, in layer properties Blend mode change "Add" to "Subtract". Press the lock button and the next to it (looks like a sun) Keep this layer at top and mocha will not track anything inside this mask. Now track the window.
Click to expand...

So I tried using Mocha to track the cords as a plane, but as soon as the actor covers up part of the cords plane, my tracked plane gets distorted and screwed up. Are you saying that if I track my dude and do what you say, that when I track my cords plane the plane won't get all distorted when the tracked dude layer moves in front of it. It will sort of handle it the same way it handles a tracked plane when it goes off the edge of the screen?
 
Next time if you want to avoid not having anything to track, just attach some tape (preferably thinner tape) to form an "x" or make a "cross" on any/all wires. Essentially you will create "tracking points" which I'm sure you have seen used in a lot of blue and green screen work.Just keep in mind that for multiple wires the tracking points should be placed far enough from each other, but not necessarily too far apart, so they are considered their own individual point of reference. To avoid having to do more than necessary in post, make sure the key markers or the most important points stay within frame for as long as possible, whenever possible.I know that you probably want to refrain from reshooting so I'll get to the matter at hand.Given the fact that there is nothing consistent to track, I agree that this particular shot would be a bit tedious to remedy. Nonetheless, it's definitely salvageable to say the least.I too would approach this with the clone stamp tool, however, since there's nothing specific to track, I would simply clone stamp and remove the wires manually. You can start by setting your clone stamp tool to "duration: constant". Then it's all a matter of setting the appropriate length for every point you paint within your clone stamp properties. Hopefully this is enough info to get you started.-B
 
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mocha subtract

mocha subtract

Exactly, it subtracts an area so the tracker ignores what is inside that layer. I really recommend spending an hour watching tutorials on mocha, it will be very valuable for you.
 
JonMar said:
Exactly, it subtracts an area so the tracker ignores what is inside that layer. I really recommend spending an hour watching tutorials on mocha, it will be very valuable for you.
Click to expand...

I have watched a few tutorials on Mocha, but not any that address the case when something is moving in front of the plane you are trying to track. Do you have a link to a tutorial that goes over this?

I tried your approach, but I couldn't find anything in the layer properties (or anywhere) that mentioned blending modes or the functions you would see in blending modes such as add, subtract, multiply.
 
ok i felt like playing so here's the scoop: this is actually quite easy, and involves two things: cc simple wire removal tool, and tracker. both in after effects.

proof of concept, i spent about 90 seconds doing a rough on the left wire so you can see the concept:



so, the tutorial is this: add the clip to the timeline, add cc wire removal, then in the bottom right window click on tracker, you'll notice that it already selected cc simple wire removal point A as your destination, so then move the tracker boxes to the start of the wire, and then press the play button in the tracker and see it do its magic, make adjustments if needed, then hit apply. then do the same thing for the second point, changing the tracker destination to the point B. KEY: you need to do this several times because your wire isn't strait, make several CC effects for each strait part of the wire. notice in this test i did theres a crap ton of garbage happening to his shirt, thats because i adjusted the effect so wide to cover that warped wire that it got onto him.

once you get the hang of it you'll move pretty fast, with the full res file of this it would probably take me only a matter of minutes to get it all fixed up

cheerios
 
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