Privacy blur / motion tracking

mike_w wrote on 9/19/2023, 11:52 AM

I'm new to MS Platinum (2022) and I expect this has been covered before, however, I'm not sure what I need to search for! Basically, I wish to obscure / blur / black out someone's face whilst they are walking past (i.e. 'in shot') during a video recording (presumably using something like motion tracking). Is this possible please? If so, can anyone advise me how to do this or point me in the right direction to a tutorial / step by step guide.

If I also wish to remove their speech, I assume the easiest way would be to completely remove ('cut') the audio track over this period? I assume that you can't, at least easily, 'separate' the one voice (from the back ground sound) and just delete that, leaving the other sounds? For future reference, I would be interested to know if this is possible (e.g. using one of Magix audio software packages) and how you would do this

Thanks in advance for any assistance :-)

Comments

CubeAce wrote on 9/19/2023, 12:53 PM

Hi Mike.

There is a tutorial made by one of the moderators, John Baker, and can be found here.

There are A.I programs out there that can remove specific sounds from a soundscape now but the Magix Programs can't currently use them as they are VST3 plugins and not compatible with the program (at least the ones I've seen demoed) . Normally such plugins are used in Audio editors and the best plugins can cost hundreds of pounds. It is possible to look for YouTube videos on the subject. Mainly they are meant to break a completely mixed track into individual instruments for remixing but there are one or two programs that are more flexible. The reason the plugins are so expensive as they are primarily used by film studios to remix old songs that may have had their instruments and vocals bounced from track to track so not available as individual multitrack recordings. Professional recording restoration is big business, and expensive.

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 9/19/2023, 1:16 PM

@mike_w

To add to @CubeAce comment

For masking a single person see this Magix tutorial

which is referred to in my tutorial Ray linked to, however the link no longer works.

I must update that tutorial to the current version of Magix Movie Studio (MMS), however there are some changes when using MMS - the tutorial was created for Movie Edit Pro the predecessor of MMS.

The naming convention and application of Chromakey Alpha is no longer automatic - you must apply this manually

Options for moving the mask are:

as in the video I linked to above - manually using the Size Position and Rotation effect which is in principle similar to that seen in the video - the major difference is that to move the object you must click anywhere within its marquee however not the centre circle handle - this is the rotation anchor point.
Using the Attach to picture position in the video (Motion tracking) effect - see this tutorial which though it uses a title object, the same technique can be applied to the mask image.

HTH

John EB

browj2 wrote on 9/19/2023, 4:11 PM

@mike_w

Hi,

Here are a couple of different ways to do the blurring and more:

However, some things, in particular, Size, Position, Rotation, as mentioned by John EB, have changed somewhat since I did these tutorials.

For audio, Magix Movie Studio has extensive audio capability. For a start, change the parameters in the Program Settings, Video/Audio tab by unchecking "Video/Audio on one track." Video and Audio will be on two tracks but still linked/grouped together. You can use the object volume curve to reduce the volume where the voice is that you want to remove by adjusting the points on the volume curve.

Or, cut out/copy a piece of the audio (ungroup the audio from the video) that has the background that you want and splice it into the audio that you want to replace along with overlaps to make transitions, or easier still, put it on a separate track, use fade-in/fade-out and use the volume curve as above to reduce the original volume where you don't want the person speaking. In the image below, I just made a copy of the existing audio and put it on track 3, trimmed it to use the part that I wanted and moved it to the location to be adjusted. Group all that back with the video to make sure that no other editing accidentally puts your audio out of sync.

Removing vocals requires a specialized plugin like Goyo (currently free as it's still in beta) or SpectraLayers (costly). In MMS, it would have to be applied to the track in the Mixer so your audio to be adjusted would have to be on that track. Otherwise, all audio on that track would be affected.

In the above image, I used Goyo to get rid of most of the voice (the spikes in the waveform of the image). It's not perfect and can affect other sound, but it is quite good.

After all that, are you totally lost?

For everything audio in MMS (and Video Pro X):

John CB