Removing Lens Spots from Footage

[Mark Suszko]

Depending how big the spots are, you might try a plug-in from Digital Heaven, but it is more for fixing dead pixels.

[David Roth weiss]

[Stephen Metzger] “I have some lens spots/smudges on some footage that are visible during a pan shot”

Not likely that you can do a thing Stephen.

The fact that you are panning means that any fix would require motion tracking on each and every spot, as well as seamless compositing from surrounding frames. The idea is to take good pixels from surrounding frames to replace bad pixels in the current frame, and because you’re moving, each frame essentially requires a custom, or nearly custom, fix.

A composting or VFX person could do it for a feature or a TV show that had a budget for this type of thing, but it’s highly doubtful that you could learn to use the motion tracking and other tools well enough to fix a problem like this yourself in a substantial way that would really improve things.

You could try a tool like DH_Dropout from https://www.DigitalHeaven.com (which is really meant for fixing different issues that use somewhat similar fixes). But, I think you will quickly find that it takes loads of time to achieve results that may not be acceptable anyway.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Mark Maness]

Not in FCP, but in Photoshop CS3 & CS4, frame by frame rotoscoping.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Shane Ross]

[Wayne Carey] “in Photoshop CS3 & CS4, frame by frame rotoscoping. “

Ooof….been there, done that. For 5 months.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Stephen Metzger]

Hmm. Anyone know any good free plugins that remove dirt/pixels?

Pickup Productions.

[Michael Gissing]

Not free but CHV make a cute plugin that lets you take a definable area and clone it over the lens dirt.

It can be tracked by keyframe and you can adjust parameters like softening edges etc. However as mentioned, a panning shot makes this a tedious frame by frame exercise unless the sky is fairly uniform.

[Mark Suszko]

I actually don’t mind the tedium of photoshop roto work so much. You can sutomate a bit of it using pre-recorded actions, and that helps a bunch. It is kind of zen-like after a while; the eye and hand go to work and the mind drifts a bit. Put the BIG playlist mix on the ipod, get a large bottle of water handy, and when you run out of tunes or bladder space, you kind of wake up and there it is, done.

[Alexander Kallas]

[Michael Gissing] ”
Not free but CHV make a cute plugin that lets you take a definable area and clone it over the lens dirt.

It can be tracked by keyframe and you can adjust parameters like softening edges etc. However as mentioned, a panning shot makes this a tedious frame by frame exercise unless the sky is fairly uniform.”

Agree, works well on stationary camera-work, but still a better option than PS, no endless transcoding problems.

Cheers
Alexander

[Alan Okey]

This is an easy task for Imagineer Systems Mokey, which I’ve used before for this exact purpose.

https://www.imagineersystems.com/products/mokey/

You may have to create one or more clean plates first in Photoshop, but it’s trivial.

[Kristyn Woods]

I was wondering the same thing :/