Removing Number Plates

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

If the plates you’re trying to remove are those on the cars that pass by really fast…. my question is why? But regardless, the few frames that the licence plate is visible can be painted or blurred (the region).

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior Compositor/VFX Artist
Bucharest, Romania

[Todd Kopriva]

Tudor is right that in this case manual painting might do, since there are so few frames.

But, the general answer:

Use motion tracking on a license ppate, apply that motion-tracking data to a solid layer, use that layer as an adjustment layer, and apply the Mosaic effect (or a blur effect) to the adjustment layer. This gives you a rectangular blocky/pixelated (or blurred) region over the license plate. If you want to be more refined, you can draw a mask on the adjustment layer to match the shape of the plate and get into more detailed rotoscoping.

If you’re using After Effects CS5, I’d recommend using Roto Brush to do much the same thing.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
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[Grant Dawson]

On the other videos I have I am following other bikes (like on the example but much closer) and the plates show up pretty clearly, specially because the camera I use seems to have a bit of a zoom, even when none is used. So if u sit about 2 or 3 meters back it appears that your more like a meter.
But I shall try the tracking option, thanks for your help