Hide Dust & Scratches Masks

[Darren25570591q7l0]

Hi all,

I have a 30 second clip with lots of vertical lines and bright white specks scattered throughout. All of them only a few frames in length, some are just one, most are two, a very few four to five. I've masked them out individually and utilised the Dust & Scratches effect to hide them, adding keyframes for each mask at the relevant point in the effects control panel time line. Now, I was well underway with this process 50 - 60 masks when I realised that the masks are not toggled on and off by the presence of the keyframe but remain on and active permanently for the length of the entire clip.

I'm now at 109 masks and I'm sure there will be more to add.

So first question, after a little research it seems all I can do to hide the mask outside of the few frames I need it, is to either move the mask off screen when not required or lower its opacity to zero at either side of the keyframes.

Both of these are very clunky solutions and time consuming to implement, am I missing a simpler option?
I know Borisfx have a mask toggle feature as part of one of their plugins, but at this time its massive overkill to subscribe for this one feature.

Is there another plugin that offers the ability to toggle masks on and off?

Or maybe there's a better solution than Dust & Scratches and masking within Prem Pro to achieve the results above?

[Peru Bob]

You could apply cuts and use the masks only on the cut video.

[Darren25570591q7l0]

Thanks Bob. That would be a lot easier than the other solutions.

[Darren25570591q7l0]

Hmmm, I tested this. I cut out a section containing a single mask but the mask persists in the original clip and is not isolated to the new clip. 😕

[Richard M Knight]

I think you may have to cut the track before adding the mask.

[Peru Bob]

I think you may have to cut the track before adding the mask.

By @Richard M Knight

Yes.  Remove the mask from the uncut clip, make your cuts, and then apply the masks to the cuts.

[Darren25570591q7l0 · Accepted solution]

I isolated a vertical line, I'd previously masked by cutting it out of the main timeline. The new clip carried over the effect including all the masks, so I deleted it, added the effect again and cut and pasted the mask required from the original timeline in to the new clip. It worked but... I now have a second piece of "dust" in the same position on the timeline but it now straddles the new clip and the original. Arrgghh 😄

It takes a minute or so to do the above and it's an awkward process and monotonous, very easy for errors to creep in if attention slips a little.

I work with old film so this is an important workflow, I imagine others working only with newer film never use the Dust & Scratches effect. However, I'm sure there are plenty that are using multiple masks. Adobe R&D can we please have a keyframe in the effect controls toggle a mask on an off option? It's seems very odd that I add keyframes but the mask persists beyond the keyframes, essentially ignoring them. That is surely a bug that's drifted in to quirk territory?

For now I'm maybe going to resolve this by dropping and rising the opacity either side of a group of keyframes. It will be much easier to work through 100+ mask in this way than start creating clips, copying and pasting masks and checking for "dust" overlaps.

Thanks to everyone that replied. I now have more options next time I work with Dust & Scratches, which could be on some upcoming clips.