Removing object from hour long video

[DougDickeson1]

Even though I'm a long-time Premiere user, my primary function has been documenting events, with little post production work other than color correction, audio sweetening, and transcoding.

Now I've been handed an hour long video that pans and zooms a fair amount. The subject is a comedy duo, but the name of the comedy club is a lit sign in front of the backstage curtain. The client wants the sign eliminated… if it was a static shot I wouldn't even be asking the question, but that darn sign comes and goes periodically since there's so much panning and zooming.

So my question is this— is there a function in Premiere or After Effects that has some sort of AI capability to detect whether that sign is in the frame, and if so, do a content-aware replacement?

Or is my only choice scrubbing through it by hand and manually setting keyframes?

Attached is a screen grab.

TIA!

[Guest]

If the client's issue is just the yellow dots, you could desaturate those and call it a day. If they need the whole sign gone, I'd quote them for a good amount of hours. 

[rodneyb56060189]

let's say you can select that sign and do your keyframes to move the mask and follow (track) the sign... what are you gonna replace it with ?  There's no auto identification of picture elements for rotoscoping ... even tracking faces ( with facial recognition ) is 'gone' when the face turns away or goes out of frame.

So, no is the answer.

I like Jpooley's suggestion... as that would apply to all clips ( the yellow desaturation ) where you apply the correction.... but I also think there's NOTHIN interesting up there if there is NO sign.... so why not just crop that whole part of the top frame out completely ?   Just stay tight on the guys and get rid of top frame with sign.

If necessary put 1080 or 4k into a 720 timeline and edit there... with the sign gone in all shots...and export 720p... most TV's and browsers upscale the stuff good enough. It's not a beauty pagent so people will be into the comedy, not the super sharp image.

[rodneyb56060189]

the reason I suggest cropping is cause the client probably has a copyright issue with the sign

[DougDickeson1]

Yep, I like the cropping idea best, too. I tried a bit of desaturation and that didn't really get the results I'm looking for. Thanks for the responses!