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Painting out Markers and other things.
I was recently reading a post about removing a pole from some footage. One of the solutions suggested was to track the footage then apply a patch from a still of the scene. He said that paitience and using scale and perspective was in order.
I am going to need to remove markers from a scene that we will need to track and I am very new to this whole end of things. How does one remove markers from a scene? The camera may be moving. I tried using the clone tool but it never matched properly. That, I am sure, was my fault. Any tutoriaks out there that explain the ways to remove markers and other stuff from footage?
Thanks
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7 Replies
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it’s really a case of trail and error. there’s no magic way for every shot – each shot will call for a different way to remove your marker.
But generally–
cloning works for still shots, if it’s moving you will need to track in a ‘clean plate’ if this doesn’t work you may get away with moving masks of your clean plate over your original footage.
with clean plates- generally the first thing to do when doing rig removals is to generate a clean plate (or at least a clean area of whatever the tracking marker is attached to) – then track it in. if you’re using a still and tracking that in, you’ll need to add noise/grain to match the moving footage. you might also need to add the camera blur back in… and hope you don’t have lens distortion.
there are some tutorials floating around (try googling Compositing/Rig Removal) but this is a skill learnt from trial and error because each shot is so different. if you’re really stuck try posting a link to your shot so we can see the damage 🙂
good luck!
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“with clean plates- generally the first thing to do when doing rig removals is to generate a clean plate (or at least a clean area of whatever the tracking marker is attached to) – then track it in. if you’re using a still and tracking that in, you’ll need to add noise/grain to match the moving footage. you might also need to add the camera blur back in… and hope you don’t have lens distortion”
Do you mean that before we add the markers we should shoot some video of the area we are going use? We are going to do a battle scene re-enactment in an open field. There probably won’t be any buildings around to use as natural markers. The shot will probably be hand held as well. I am unsure how to generate a clean plate if the shot will always change. I am VERY VERY NEW, so things that seem simple to you are often over my head but I am learning.
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I would first see if you need markers at all. I think people get over zealous sometimes with markers and put them every where when you could have done a track off the corner of a building or whatever.
Removing a small point from a shot usually doesn’t require a clean plate to replace it. Since it’s just a tiny point you can get away with murder. Since you’ll already have the tracking data for the shot, use that data to either have a clone tool spot ride over the point or as a small circle mask on a duplicate. On this duplicate add the ‘median’ filter. Which will mary the surrounding pixels over the point.
So in conclusion:
1. Don’t add any more points than you have to (even if that’s zero points).
2. Make the points very small. Better for the track and easier to hide.
3. Shouldn’t need a plate because you are fixing tiny points. Use cloning or median.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Thanks a lot guys, I will try this!
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With a hand-held shot, you obviously won’t have a “clean” plate. In the example of the pole, I once had a shot of a park that had some “don’t step on the grass, we just put it down” pink ribbon that lopped it’s way horizontally across the shot. I cut a soft matte around the ribbon to knock it out, then I duplicated my original shot and layered it behind my main footage with the hole where the ribbon was. By slipping my underlying shot a frame or two in time, the ribbon effectively slid out of the way (since it was a hand-held shot). I think I also physically moved the shot up or down a bit to help. This cleaned up most of the ribbon fairly easily, and since the footage showing through the hole was very similar in movement and distance to what needed to go in the hole, it matched pretty well. Of course, there were still other problem areas where I did see a flash of ribbon from the underlying plate, so I made myself small patches of grass footage to lay on top of the problem areas, being careful to use grass that matched the distance of the grass needed for the shot.
Anyway, one case study. As someone else said, every shot seems to be different.
-GregAntifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com -
if you’re doing a battle re-inact then i would definately test this before you shoot, and if you’re shooting in an open field there will probably be some trees that you can track. I would head to the field, with the camera, and look for natural tracking markers. it will save you a lot of time. good luck
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You might also think about how things will look after the edit. If you can do the wides/mediums on sticks instead of hand-held and only go hand-held for tight close-ups you can save lots of time (and therefore money) for the production company. Wide hand-held shots can be a nightmare to get looking good, especially if the director goes for the “shaky cam” approach.
Ralph
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