Painting Over C-stand Clamp

[Steve Roberts]

Luckily, the c-clamp doesn’t change shape, so you can draw a mask on the footage with the pen tool, then set a key for its shape and drag the mask across the screen and/or scale it up so it matches the footage. Only set keys where the speed of the movement changes — you don’t need a key on every frame, or at regular intervals. Set the mask to invert to cut a hole in the footage.

The next question is: what do you put in the hole?
It depends on your footage. Got a still?

[Jeremy Allen]

I’m not familiar with your footage, but would it be possible to save yourself some work and scale up/reposition the shot just enough to get the clamp outta there?

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8core MacPro, 3.0 GHZ, 10GB RAM, OSX 10.5.2

AE CS3

[Sofi Marshall]

Thanks, everyone, for your comments. The background is really just a wall, although there’s a difference in lighting coming from a practical so it’s a bit more complicated. Here’s a still I just grabbed from a low quality Quick Time movie.

picture1.png

The clamp is above the shoulder of the girl in the foreground. The branch also makes it a bit tricky..

I could possible scale up the frame, but I’d end up pushing the one girl very close to the edge so I’d rather avoid that. Keyframing it out with a mask, seems like it might just be the best way to go.

[Nicholas Toth]

Is the shot locked off? (if it is, that is totally cake to do — paint in PS and import the layer to AE and overlay…or just do the whole shot in photoshop using video layers…or do the whole thing in after effects using the stamp/paint tool…skin a cat 3 different ways)

If it isn’t locked you may have to do some simple tracking. I think videocopilot.net has some good direction on how to do that. Maybe not EXACTLY what you’re looking to do, but how to track, insert footage, whatnot.

Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com

[Nicholas Toth]

duh

‘I’m editing a film and in one shot that I have to use the clamp from a c-stand visible for about 2 seconds and then the camera pans away from it.’

check this one out:
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/advanced_sky_replacement/

If you use that track concept to apply a cleaned layer over the stand, you should be good. Just make sure you track something that is in the frame longer than the stand, perhaps the branches to the left. Make sense?

Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com

[Sofi Marshall]

Very helpful, thank you!