Content aware fill Generate fill layer process freezes with team projects

[robertg43195520]

My Generate Fill Layer process is stuck in the beggining process for the past hour at the same place. Im kind of new to this. I am working off a subclip. all the original files are on a Nas. Ts-451+ 8gb w 4x4tb iron wolf pro's . Im in a team project that I created and own. what am i missing.?

[Rick Gerard]

I am assuming this is a drone shot and the only part that you are trying to fill is inside the rectangle. If that is the case I would duplicate the footage layer, pre-compose, crop the new comp to only include the masked area and a little more, pre-compose again and then run CAW fill on the smaller comp. I also do not see anything in the surrounding area that would generate a clean fill so you are probably going to have to create a reference frame.  All you really need is a small new layer to fix the problem layer. Even if you have to motion stabilize the shot and then put the motion back in and line it up with the original footage, the process is going to be way faster than trying to CAW an 8K image that probably could be cropped to 1/8 the original size.

The mask is also including something that looks like a fence or sidewalk. There just isn't anything that I can see around that mask that could be used to automatically generate a fill without creating a reference frame.  The screenshot above is about the size I would make the pre-comp. There is no need at all to process all those extra pixels.

You'll also want to run CAF with the comp at 100% scale and Full resolution. I think there are other ways to fix whatever is wrong with the area under the mask, but then again, I'm not seeing the entire shot. The shot is awfully long also. It looks like it is more than 2 minutes. Even if you get CAF to work on the original footage layer, it is going to probably take days for it to fill a two-minute shot. I did one the other day that was 4K, had 3 holes in it, a lot of movement and 4 reference frames, and was about 11 seconds long. It took more than an hour. 

[robertg43195520]

Thank you for the response. so there is a construction barrier there. (orange and white construction barrier) . The thing is this.. it wont even start to anaylyze the shot. when you use content aware it anaylizes the scene . this wont even get that far. it just says loading on all sides. its also a team project file. Im not sure that has anything to do with it. i did see something about the Dynamic Link not really working between PP and AE. not sure if that is the real issue. I am curious if its because the team project is trying to bering the entire project in to after effects. if you notice all the things it is loading under the button to generate. so the question is three fold... 1: does team projects play a part with the dynamic link 2: is the clip actually too long? and 3: is Content aware working with team projects after efects?

[Rick Gerard]

How much of the shot do you need to fix? Keeping Dynamic Link active in a shot that involves this kind of processing is a bit insane. Here is what I would do:

1. Select the trimmed clip in the Premiere Pro sequence and select Replace with After Effects composition
2. Save the new AE comp that is created and return to Premiere Pro and UNDO the Dynamic Link
3. Return to After Effects and the comp that was created from the clip and duplicate the footage layer
   1. Rename the footage layer to something meaningful (Fix) and pre-compose moving all attributes and opening the new comp
4. Sect the footage again and pre-compose once more
5. In the original pre-comp (Fix 1 Comp) resize the composition to include just the area you need to fix plus a little using the region of interest and the Composition>Crop Comp to Region of Interest tool
6. Return to the main composition, and you will see that the Fix Comp 1 layer will not be properly lined up so move it manually close to the right position, temporarily set the blend mode to difference, and finalize the position. so you can't see anything but black then set blend back to normal
7. Return to the Fix Comp 1 comp, select the footage and pre-compose again moving all attributes but you won't have to open this second comp.
8. Draw and if needed animate the mask over the area you need to fix then start CAF using the Motion Tracking workspace
9. Create a reference frame for the project and edit it in Photoshop so you hide the problem, then do that again as many times as you think you need - then Run CAF 
10. When CAF finishes and the results are OK Turn off the bottom layer so you only see the fixed area
11. Return to the main comp and verify that everything is good
12. Render the main comp to a visually lossless format that you will import into Premiere Pro and place directly above the original clip in the sequence

If you want to you can even turn off the bottom layer in the main comp and render a lossless with an alpha movie that contains only the fixed part and import that into Premiere Pro. That will probably decrease your final render time a bit. 

I threw this example together for you. Check out the screenshots, not the quality of the fix because I did not create a reference frame. The footage is log, 4K, 59.94 FPS. Trying CAF before I resized the comp worked OK but it took my system about 4 minutes to generate the fill layer. On the smaller comp CAW was done, with exactly the same result, in less than 30 seconds.  

An even faster option would be to camera track or motion track the area that needs to be fixed and create a fill layer using a frame from Photoshop that you could attach to the tracked area. Maybe Corner Pin track and fix using Mocha Pro.