How do I remove an item occasionally obscured by something in the foreground?

Question

Hello. I would like to remove the Lavalier mike and its cord from this clip. Normally, it would be a straight forward issue that can be solved easily. However, the woman’s hands keeps interfering and a simple removal is not possible. I will appreciate it very much if someone shows me the steps to take to remove tha mike and its cord while keeping the hands.

Rick Gerard · Answer

You'll have to Rotoscope the subject's hand using Rotobrush or Mocha AE. You only have to Roto the part of the hand that moves in front of the Mic. The roto should be a separate layer, a copy or a matte, that you can place above the removed mic. You'll end up with three layers: the rotoscoped matte for the hand, the removed mic, and the original footage on the bottom.

You also might be able to use Keylight to generate a matte from the orange shirt. That would simplify a bunch of roto. It would leave the Mic and probably some of the cable, but you could export a frame clean as a PSD, fix the shirt, and isolate just the repair, then Motion track the Mic and add the motion to the removed mic image from Photoshop.

A combination of Tracking in Mocha, a PSD from a clean frame that only hides the mic, and Keylight to create a matte for the hand would probably be the simplest workflow and require the least amount of keyframing.

If I get time later today, I'll post a screenshot of the setup for tracking in Mocha AE, Keylight, and masking. In the meantime, you might want to look at this tutorial series on Mocha from Boris FX. It covers motion tracking fairly well.

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