• Adobe After Effects

  Removing product names from objects in shots

  Posted by Matthew Dorris on February 4, 2009 at 11:22 pm

  Hi All,

  I’m trying to help some friends out with an edit. I have some really crappy VHS footage they are using for a project–and I need to remove some product names from certain items in the shot. The most frequent culprit is a large red plastic cup with a coke logo plastered in the center.
  I’ve been using clone stamp in CS3 on the steady locked down shots, which has been working well due to the fact that there is no motion, and the footage sucks to begin with.
  I’m not sure that the clone stamp tactic would hold up if i had to do this with high rez footage, and it definitely doesn’t work on shots with motion. If the camera moves then i just end up with a matrix of blurry shifting pixels as i try to clone stamp from frame to frame.
  My goal is to make the red cup look like it’s just a red cup–like it never had COKE written on it. I also need to maintain realism here, so the replacement cannot be distracting.
  Any tips, tricks, or advice?

  Thanks
  Matt

  Stuart Elith replied 17 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Stuart Elith

  February 4, 2009 at 11:47 pm

  Without seeing the footage, the general technique I would suggest is to track the object in question, then mask in a patch to fit it. This could be a patch of video (so that you get the same feel in terms of grain, focus etc) or start with a solid and add your own noise (i often go with a solid just because i can’t find a section of video that will work across a whole shot). Playing with the mask in terms of how much you blend/feather it can help integrate it more with the original cup.

  And noise is definitely your friend.
• 

  Matthew Dorris

  February 5, 2009 at 5:23 pm

  Is there a way to animate the position of a paint stroke? I.E, can I animate the position of clone stamp? I can’t find a keyframe option for it in the effects tab of the clip I’m painting.
• 

  Stuart Elith

  February 5, 2009 at 11:58 pm

  If you twirl down the effect there is a “transform : stroke” thing underneath all effect options of the stroke, and Position is within that. Might give you some funny results though because the clone sample location is separate, may give an odd illusion if you don’t move the sample area with the stroke. Will depend on your project i guess.

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