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Activity Forums Adobe Premiere Pro extract moving people from footage

  • extract moving people from footage

    Posted by John Kis on March 30, 2009 at 12:45 am

    Hi all,

    I have some video of people running from behind trees. The camera was set up very still and doesn’t move throughout the clip. The only thing that’s moving are the people running around.

    I would like to extract only the footage of the running people and place them in a different clip of some other trees.

    I’ve got: Prem Pro 2.0, AE CS4, Mocha, Re:Visions Twixtor and FieldsKit.

    I’ve had a look at the “How do you cut out an actor from the background (Rotoscoping)?” FAQ under AE, but it seems to mainly about removing stuff you don’t want, or is at a conceptual level.

    Any ideas?

    John

    Eddie Lotter replied 17 years, 1 month ago 6 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • Lucas Windsor

    March 30, 2009 at 2:59 am

    Getting rid of the people and leaving the people would be simple, but changing the trees is a bit more complex.

    It would be really hard to match up. You could composite the new trees over the existing footage and then mask the areas out to match the people poking through. That could be hard to get things lined up, plus the lighting and everything else may not look right if you are using different footage. Maybe some tree stills could be used to cover over bad spots. You said the camera was still so that should make it a bit easier.

    That is all I can think of, but I am sure there are many smarter then me on these forums.

  • Vince Becquiot

    March 30, 2009 at 3:39 am

    What you have on your hands and many hours of rotoscoping. No way around it.

    Vince Becquiot

    Kaptis Studios
    San Francisco – Bay Area

  • Todd Roush

    March 30, 2009 at 6:10 am

    Lots of feathering if you can get away with a more ‘etherial look.’

    I had a tape stolen once and spent many, many hours inserting clips from a 2006 speech into a 2007. It was time consuming and did not look like Lucasfilm when it was done but the customer was happy and thought it looked kind of cool.

    Good luck.

    todd

    Todd Roush
    Dreamscape Digital Media
    Panny DVX-100’s but changing so Sony or Cannon HDV soon.

  • John Kis

    March 30, 2009 at 11:42 am

    Thanks for all the tips and suggestions guys – great! I just noticed the “difference matte” in Prem Pro. Going by the instructions (and the demonstration images), this is the perfect tool to use. The only problem is I can’t seem to get it to work – i.e. following the instruction doesn’t give me anything remotely like the final product. Has anyone had experience with the difference matte? I’ve seen a few posts out there that aren’t too complimentary of it.

  • Jeff Brown

    March 30, 2009 at 1:44 pm

    I’ve tried difference mattes in a few different software packages over the years (though not Premiere), and it has never really worked. Rotoscoping is probably what’s needed.

    -jeff

  • Eddie Lotter

    March 30, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    [John Kis] “difference matte […] this is the perfect tool to use”

    It would be if the background were perfectly the same in each frame. Unfortunately, modern compression schemes are enough to make each frame appear sufficiently different that it renders the tool useless.

    I agree with the others, rotoscoping in a special-effects package is the only way to go.

    Cheers
    Eddie

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