Removing Text/Logo From Video

Report · Sep 22, 2023

Trying to remove text and/or logos from some videos.

Running After Effects 23.6 under Windows 10 64 bit.

This is a sample video for test purposes. Tried using Content Aware Fill with various settings of Feathering and/or Alpha Expansion. But the results are not really good enough with blurring and/or smearing inplace of the text/logo!

How to get the best possible result of removing text and logo from the video?

Thank you.

Test Video

Report · Sep 22, 2023

Not sure what you expect. The videos are extremely compressed and started out as SD resolution with fields with the logo covering around 1/20th of all visible pixels. There is simply not enough info there to reconstruct/ fill anything no matter what method is used. This is pretty much a hopeless case. At the very least the video would have to have much, much, much less compression.

Mylenium

Report · Sep 23, 2023

I suspected there might be an issue with this particular video clip due to its low quality.

How about the following (better quality) video clip. Try to remove the "BBC" logo from the entire clip.

Thank you.

Report · Sep 25, 2023

If you ever watch mainstream use of removing branded clips, they tend to crop and zoom. The football rights in the UK are complicated (money reasons) so when the BBC shows Sky coverage, they zoom in and cover with their own logos. (Obviously they have permission to do this, it's not like they are stealing content.)

So I'd suggest a similar approach personally.

Report · Sep 25, 2023

Thanks for the comment regarding cropping.

Unfortunately cropping is not an option for most of the vidoes I have due to forground image content taking up almost all of the frame. If I were to crop those videos, then I would lose some foreground content, which is not was is wanted.

I have further experimented with After Effects by trying different settings of Mask Feathering, Alpha Expansion, Fill Method, and Lighting Correction, but the results were still not good with either blurring and/or smearing appearing where the logo was located within the test video clip.

I am aware that sampling a clean area of the clip similar in appearance to the background area under the logo can be used as a fill to cover the logo. For this particular video clip, that procedure may work. But this takes time, and there may not be clean areas to take sample fills from, especially for some of my videos where the foreground and background frequently changes beneath the logos/texts.

Any other setting or procedure that could be used to help remove the logo cleanly, please?

Report · Sep 28, 2023

How about trying Photoshop's new generative fill? Take some stills into Photoshop and see what it produces, you can then bring these back into AE and use as a reference for content aware fill. Might be worth a shot.

Alternatively, the next option is to cover it up. For each shot, could you add something over the logo, a plant, balloons, edge of a wall. Something which obscures the logos, then use a strong vignette so as not to draw the eye?

I don't think you'll find a quick solution for this, but there are creative tricks, like I've outlined. And if the shot keeps changing, try mixing up the approaches, zoom on one shot, obscure on the next, content aware fill on the next, blur etc...

Report · Sep 29, 2023

Thanks for the comments.

Unfortunately, for most of my other videos, the possiblity of using "fills" is not really an option due to the nature of the video imagery which changes frequently, and there are no clean areas where one can take suitable clean samples for fills.

I wish to totally remove the overlaid logos and texts from the videos. I do not want to replace existing logos and texts with some other obscuring logos and texts.

Report · Sep 29, 2023

Realistically, we're back to Mylenium's answer. Your only real option is to contact the rights owner and ask for clear copies of the footage.

Report · Sep 30, 2023

In some cases, it should be possible to contact video producers to request a logo/text free copy of their videos. But there is no guarantee that such requests will be granted. In other cases it appears that contacting video producers would be impossible due to lack of contact details.

In the meantime, Ive regrettably, now uninstalled After Effects'as it didn't meet my expectations.