line removal / adding film grain

cmroberson wrote on 10/20/2011, 8:58 PM

I've got two effects I need to achieve.

The first: due to a camera malfunction, I have a lot of footage with a bright vertical line on the left side of the frame. I need to remove this line, or at least make it non-obtrusive.

The second: I want to make some of my footage appear like old film stock; is there a way to add dust, scratches, and grain? In varying amounts depending on the needs of the scene?

I'm aware of some tools in other programs that can achieve these results, but if there's any way to do i in MEP17 I'd much rather keep everything in one program.

Comments

terrypin wrote on 10/21/2011, 9:01 AM

Hi,

Starting with your second question, never had the need to try that, but this will probably do what you want:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/MEP-OldMovie.jpg

a. The effect is found in the rather odd section I've shown: Video Effects > Design Elements > Upright picture eff.

b. With your target object selected, d-click Film Strip (or drag it onto your clip).

c. Then (unless you want the 35 mm stuff) delete the track as I've shown.

Your first question is less precise. It will obviously depend on a few factors you haven't specified. For example, is the line a constant colour? In an unchanging fixed position? What is behind the line? Does that change?

If the line was in a fixed position and its background was unchanging then it's easily fixed. I'd copy a strip of that background and place it over the line. Otherwise I don't see how a fully satisfactory result can be achieved.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

cmroberson wrote on 10/21/2011, 1:45 PM

Thanks for the tip on the film effect; looks like it’s just a looped animation overlay? It’s very close to what I’m looking for (after removing the 8mm thing… yeah). That reassures me that I can get the effect I want within MEP17. I’ll do some research on how the loops work and see what I can come up with.

In regards to the vertical line, here is an example:

http://i56.tinypic.com/2lxtf9l.jpg

It's on a lot of footage, most of it with moving backgrounds... but it is in a fixed position, thank goodness. I’m thinking about a “wire removal” tool, like what they use for wire stunts in action films, in which you can select a wire (or obnoxious vertical line) and the program overwrites it with what it thinks would be there. I know some higher-end programs like After Effects have that option, but I don’t know about MEP17.

If not that specifically, I’m thinking about doing something similar to what you said; overlaying a several-pixel-wide strip over the line, taken from the same video. Perhaps two, duplicating several pixels to the left and several pixels to the right, then blurring them together in the middle. It wouldn’t be seamless but it’d be less noticable… and since I’m going for the old-film look I could slap a nasty film scratch over it too. Just can’t have it look like a weird digital artifact.

That said, I am unsure exactly how I would accomplish such a thing. Wanted to see if there was an easier way before I dove in... a tool specifically for that function, or maybe a way to automate the process once I set it up.

Thanks again!

terrypin wrote on 10/22/2011, 4:38 AM

There's no dedicated tool of that sort in MEP but your proposed approach is the sort of thing I had in mind. I've had only limited success so far with my experiments, but I'll describe them in case you and others can develop further. There may, of course, also be better methods that the experts here can suggest.

As a basis I made a rough sample clip by superimposing a vertical white line on a zoomed extract from your screenshot:

With that on track 1 I then copied it to track 2 and used Movement effects > Section to make a small strip surrounding the target artifact.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/MEP-LineRemoval-01.jpg.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/MEP-LineRemoval-02.jpg

For me, it was then a matter of trial/error with various tools applied to that section. For example, using Video Effects > Art filter > Erosion = 15
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/MEP-LineRemoval-03.jpg

and also Video Effects > Sharpness = 23 made the line less prominent:

Of course, every section with significant changes of background would need independent treatment - hard work!

EDIT: I've reported this bug before. Those embedded links above look fine before using Send (and as I use Edit) but end up duplicated and with the HD suffix corrupted. However, clicking the left one of each pair does play the respective YT video, albeit not in HD by default. I'll report it again...

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK