Trying to Remove Odd Pixel Issue with After Effects

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
June 5, 2020
4 replies
1598 views

We were shooting on a Phantom slow motion camera and the camera actually burned in some odd artifacts into the footage. We noticed this once we dumped the footage, but we were hoping to salvage some of the footage we shot while we were out. Can anyone tell me if this footage would be salvageable? This issue persists throughout the remainder of the clips we shot (about 25 clips). I have uploaded a short version so you can see what I am talking about. I tried removing the pixels via content aware and have had no good results. We have also tried cloning out each pixel within each frame (extremely time consuming), to no avail. I should also mention, I'm not a VFX pro by any means, so this may be an easy fix I am overlooking. Any help would be much appreciated!

Pixel_Issue_-_Forum_Help.zip

How to

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Rick Gerard

Community Expert

I have seen this kind of sensor bug before. It is usually cleared up by rebooting the camera. Unfortunately, it is often very hard to see in the viewfinder in the field.

Because the errors are in a straight vertical line and they can be covered by a simple shape path with about a 10-pixel wide line, I locked the bottom layer, set a guideline where the problem ended, added a light yellow straight vertical path. I then entered shape, pos in the timeline search field which was enough to reveal both the Shape 1, Stroke, and Transform Shape 1/Position property. I then duplicated the Shape 1 layer (Ctrl/Cmnd + d) and adjusted the X position to cover the next line. I did this 18 times, set the layer as a track matte for the footage, locked the footage layer so it wouldn't move, then opened up the Tracker Workspace and Content-Aware fill and just chose Surface for the fill method and ran a test. The analysis on your sample video only took a couple of minutes and the results are almost perfect. Here's what the shape layer looked like. The CAF is already done but I wanted you to see the starting point.

Here's the sample clip with about half the problem removed.

I think this is probably the most effective solution to this problem.

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kyleb27771137Author

Participant

Wow! Looks great, Rick. I am really pleased with how well that turned out with your fix. I really appreciate the help. Is there any way you could do a short screen record to walk me through how you are achieving the results? If you could just do a few lines, so I could get the hang of it. I hope this isn't too much to ask for from you. Either way, thanks again for the info. Sorry to be such a newb to AE, I'm much more fluent in PP. 🙂

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Rick Gerard

Community Expert

I don't know when I would get a chance to do a screen recording but the complete workflow was described in detail. Follow those steps, accurately re-position every time you duplicate it, use the screen or overlay blend mode so you can see the problem pixels through the shape layers, then set the track matte and run CAF. I didn't check using the Object option, and the edges of the object in the center might need more work and a separate pass but I think that this is probably the easiest solution.

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pmcdonald

Participating Frequently

Do the pixels move or are they arrayed in those columns in a static fashion? Let's hope the latter..

I don't think there's going to be a magic bullet fix. Here's a couple of options that may work on static artifacts:

Keying > CC Simple Wire Removal. Define your vertical lines one by one and creep the thickness up until you just remove the lines. The correction may be too obvious.
Duplicate your image and key the red artifacts to punch holes in the red spots. Place your duplicate image underneath the keyed layer and offset the position ever so slightly to reveal clean portions of the frame. Repeat with the blue points, expanding your key slightly to compensate for the black edges. Use the same method but mask the black and white points manually. Again, may be too obvious.
Attempt a Change Color on the blue and red points to swing them around to the background. Can't see this working all that effectively but may be a cheap and easy way to get a cleaner image to work on.
Try the Dust Scratches filter.

Good luck! I'd be bracing myself for some laborious cleanup.

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kyleb27771137Author

Participant

Thanks for the options! I appreciate your response. I will give some of these a try and report back.

Roland Kahlenberg

Legend

If there are no camera moves then I'd clean up a frame in PS and drop it over the video; add a mask then adjust duration. Then add grain to match with the moving/video area.

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