Removing Wires / Rigs – Complete Process?

[Steve Roberts]

Here’s one way that works best with a moving camera or moving rigging:

Duplicate the footage, placing the duped footage layer over the original footage layer. Select the dupe, and apply a two-point open mask over each wire. Once you’ve masked all the wires, apply the render>stroke effect, set to “all masks”, and set the stroke to “reveal original” (I think that’s the wording). You might need to animate the masks (mask shape parameter) to follow the wires as they move through the frame.

Now here’s the trick: slide the duped layer one or two frames in time. The strokes will then reveal the parts of the duped footage layer where the wire isn’t there yet, or has already passed by (depending on which way you slide the footage). These clean bits will cover up the wires in the original footage layer below.

Give it a go,
Steve

[Jerry Witt]

A still camera and a clean plate are obviously very easy and you are on the right track. For a moving camera I have found that using the clone brush is the best bet. You can clone from a previous or future frame and even offset the position. It’s tedious frame by frame work, but the results can be very convincing. Do yourself a favor and shoot in and edit in a progressive format (24P or 30P).

I supervised a team of after effects artists doing wire removal on a martial arts film. Over one weekend it took about 70 person-hours to do less than a minute of footage. Our biggest challenge was de-interlacing footage that was shot on film, edited in PAL and delivered on NTSC. Untangling the fields to get frames was a real pain.

[Alex Kuzelicki]

Thanks guys,

Will take both of your ideas on board and give them a try.

I’ve played with the ‘clone brush’ in other programs before but have never been satisfied with the end result. It works ok when the background is reasonably still or uniform (like a blue sky or blank wall) but if it’s moving or complex (like a forest in the wind) it’s impossible to get a nice effect ie. you can see where the composites don’t match (a fuzzy movement).

Worth trying in different situations though – I’ve found that there is no one way to do anything/every situation is different (what works in one, won’t work in another) so I’m not discounting the ‘clone brush’ method at all.

Will definitely shoot on Progressive frames, Jerry. Sounds like a nightmare trying to deinterlace and reformat, etc, etc on the martial arts project. Looking forward (some day) to a ‘one-format world’. Is that too much of a fantasy? Maybe in a decade they’ll get it sorted?

Anyway, your advice is very much appreciated, Steve & Jerry.

Regards,

ALEX

[Queenkellee]

No meantion of the version of AE your using.

FYI…if you are using AE 6.5, In the set of Cycore FX plugins that come with 6.5 they have a CC Simple Wire Removal Plugin. For help in using it you can download from their website a sample project that shows examples of comps with the plugins at https://www.cycorefx.com/cfxdwn.php. (for instance, i note in their sample project they use a few instances of the plugin to get the whole wire out.