After Effects Content Aware Fill looking blurry and smudgy

Report · May 19, 2022

Hi, I am currently using After Effects 22.4. I need to remove a boom shadow on the door frame in a shot with some slight movement. In the past I would just painted it out with the clone stamp and then parented it to the tracked movement. Having seen the results on YouTube videos of Content Aware Fill, I decided to give it a try. I have attempted different settings for 2 days now. The fills are always smudgy and blurry on such a smooth and evenly lit surface. And it failed to reproduce any edges - a fin-like pattern of lines are created instead. When I masked the area as multiple patches of similar paints with no edges or lines, they still look low-resolution and smudgy and noisy. And the tone is always darker in the top half within the fill.

The project is set as 32bpc, and so is the Content-Aware Fill settings. A frame right before the shadow comes in is set as a reference frame. Masks are feathered between 8 and 14%; Alpha Expansion between 5 and 10. Object as the Fill Method seems to have the better results, same goes to transparency grid for the masks. Light correction was tried - Moderate has blended in the fill better than Slight and Strong.

The tutorials I watched have accomplished way more complex shots in great results. I am sure I am just missing a simple step or setting here or there. Can someone point it out to me, please? I have attached the reference frame and some of the better results here. Thank you!

Report · May 19, 2022

Not sure that your workflow is the best one to do what you need. My approach for this kind of shots is to freeze a frame to clean it, matchmoving with the door and some masking. Even you can achieve a good result using an adjustment layer with a feathered mask, a blur and a Match Grain effect.

Report · May 19, 2022

Content-Aware Fill needs either a reference frame in the form of a Photoshop file you create or some frames before and after the frame you are trying to fix that do not have the problem in the same spot. Let me explain the last part of the sentence a little better.

Imagine a wide shot of a single car moving down a road from above. In each frame of the video, the car is a little farther down the road. Content-Aware fill would work on this shot because it can sample the frames before and after the current frame and use those pixels to replace the car. If the flaw you are trying to fix does not move to a different part of the geometry in the shot (the door frame) in a similar way that the vehicle moves down the road, then CA Fill doesn't have much to work with. The repair will almost always have problems. I think that describes your situation reasonably well.

The only workaround for CA Fill in that situation is to create reference frames where you paint out the problem in Photoshop.

From what I see in your screenshots, the camera moves quite a bit. My approach would be to Motion Stabilize the whole shot to remove the camera movement, or use a combination of Mocha AE and Corner Pin and CC Power Pin to freeze the movement of the problem area, then create a fill layer that fixes the problem. I do that kind of thing all the time. I use CA Fill about two or three times a year. It works great for some shots, but it is inefficient for most shots that I work on when I need to fix some flaw in the scene.

Maybe this Stabilized Power Pin tutorial I did a while ago will help. Imagine that you are replacing the background on the bench instead of adding graffiti. Content-Aware Fill would never be able to handle the shot in this project. The tutorial is about 20 minutes long, but the essential parts will only take a few minutes to digest.

I hope this helps.

Report · May 19, 2022

Thanks for taking the time to reply and explain. Really appreciate that.

I should clarify a little - The first picture I attached is the clean frame before the boom shadow, and was used as a reference frame to generate the fill layer. The framing then stayed the same throughout. The other screengrabs are cropped out in order to show the issues clearer.

Below are the actual shots in full frame (the reference frame before the boom and the one afterwards with the fill layer).

The way you described is pretty much what I would do previously. From the demonstration/tutorial videos, I was just amazed by the capabilities of Content Aware Fill and how easy to use. I was hoping I could learn a new way that's all. But thank you nonetheless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4rQHiox-gk

Report · May 19, 2022

The tutorial you are referencing is a little simplistic, and a lot was left out that should have been in there. It is a good example of a tutorial presented by an enthusiast. At least he admits that he is not a professional.

The shot in the tutorial is a near-perfect example of an object moving over a background. Your shot appears to have a door that is being opened or closed with a problem mic boom shadow rolling through the moving door. It would be much easier to fix if the door did not move and the shadow did the moving. Because the door appears to be moving, and there does not appear to be any frame of the door in the same position. With no shadow, you will have to create a bunch of reference frames or try the Stabilized Power Pin workflow in my tutorial.

If you go with CA Fill, you'll have to experiment with the other modes. Surface instead of Object will probably give the best results, and the lighting changes will also have to be fiddled with. Good luck with your project.

Report · May 20, 2022

Thank you again for writing back. I’m always hesitant to post questions on forums. People can get real mean LOL but you have been super helpful and patient.

Actually the shadow does not appear on the door itself as it happens after the door was opened. It’s just the part of the door frame that I circled in the earlier pictures. And as you can see there is very little camera movement and no obstruction over that area. For a pretty straight forward clip I just couldn’t get the results I want with various settings. There is always a grey blob floating around. And those were the best results LOL!

I agreed that Surface should have been a better setting but the full looks more glitchy and smudgy for some reasons.

I know there are simpler ways to deal with this. I just thought an easy task like this one would be a good way for me to learn to use Content Aware Fill. It seems like those tutorials I watched have been overselling this hahaha.

Thanks again.

Sent from my iPhone