As Ray mentioned earlier, what I was really looking for was the equivalent of a cloning tool. Cookie Cutter does the job nicely, but I can't help thinking a cloning facility would be simpler to use - and surely not beyond Magix's ability to implement?
Hi Richard,
Not sure that I follow you about cloning. Could you please elaborate?
A definition of cloning is "make an identical copy of" and the way to do that in MEP/VPX is to hold down Ctrl+drag the object with the mouse to a different location, thus making a copy. The copy comes with any applied effects. Thus, what I did was to clone the image to a separate track, 2-tracks immediately below the original. Then, I inserted an appropriate alpha mask in between, moved/resized it over the hair, then moved/resized the object that is inside the mask to be a part of the sky that has no hair. If necessary, the mask and the object in it can be moved/resized over time using keyframing. I find this a little easier to do using the mask than the Cookie Cutter, and I can create and use a mask of a shape that suits the problem.
As for the colour and brightness, I included the scopes so that you could see that the brightness was dull, that there was a green tinge to the whole image, and it's rather hazy. I don't believe that the image really was the way it looked to the naked eye, just the way the camera captured it at the time. Add in some degradation of the film over time. I would do something closer to what I showed, reducing green and raising blue slightly. The mask on the sky was just for fun, to show that it could be done. I could have completely replaced the sky with a different image.
As @Scenestealer points out, using HDR lifts those dark areas. Gamma also helps, especially with contrast. When you've never used these tools, it's quite an eye-opener to see what happens in the scopes and to the image. Saturation needed a bit of a boost. The scopes help point out some of these problems and the trick is in knowing what to do about them.
Hi Peter,
This would be simpler to do using the Colour Correction Effect which is basically a rotoscoping tool that creates a travelling matte to isolate selected areas in videos.
Could you please expound on the Colour Corrrect Effect - what is it and how does it do rotoscoping?
Opening Xara from within MEP/VPX, allows one to create a mask and modify it over time, thus rotoscoping. The modification is not just position, but the actual shape that tweens if not used frame by frame but rather by the default half a second. The only problem that I have now is that reopening the XAR object causes a crash. This may be due to the message about the Update Service expiry blocking reopening - this is a pain.
John CB
Hi John
In image editing Cloning is copying a selected area to another to repair damaged areas eg from a scanned image, or remove unwanted objects.
The similar tools are available in some video editors and as third party addons/standalones
Personally I would use Blender as seen here 
.
John EB
Hi John,
Cloning - copying a selected area to another. Is this not what we are doing? The clone is the copy that is affected by the mask, with the copy just being moved so that the new area is within the mask.
I find the method in the video that you posted totally over-complicated. The guy did essentially what I do with Xara and MEP. But, it's so much simpler in MEP/VPX and especially with Xara added in (when it works correctly).
Other than using a mask, just use a Section, Free proportions, Fullscreen off, make the rectangle over the area to use as the replacement, go to Size/Position, and move this over the area to be replaced. Give it a bit of blur. Of course, you are limited to a rectangle. I find that this is basically what PaintShop Pro does.
Or, if you have Xara, right-click on the video, Video Effects, Create overlay graphics animation, create the mask in Xara using the Shape command. Adjust, make it white. If you want it animated, the follow the instructions for animating (I think that I did a tutorial on this).
Back to the video, the guy did not make animated or dynamic masks that change shape, just static masks, although he did make an adjustment or two. This is very easy with Xara and MEP. To overcome the crashing problem, if I just want a static mask, I can export the frame to a jpg, open it in Xara, create one or masks, save and use them in MEP/Xara. There is none of that linking PERT type charts - everything goes on the timeline.
John CB
Hi John
In essence you are correct, Xara is easier to use, however there are limitations in the tools available eg colour correction.
As I said, personally I would use Blender as I am familiar with and want to explore it usage with video more - I am still learning a lot of its capabilities and workflows making animations and effects for use in MEP/VPX. The Blender method is more complicated and, for anyone who already uses it, is an alternative method.
John EB
Hi John,
I rarely, if ever, use Xara for colour correction or much else to do with photos except for cutting out parts using the magnetic lasso or region masking and removing things using cloning or one-touch healing. PaintShop Pro is my default bitmap editor for both VPX/MEP and Xara. Xara is great for vectors, weak for bitmap.
What I was meaning was that to create masks, either animated or static, it's hard to beat Xara. The only colour that you need is white.
John CB
BTW, whatever happened to proDAD Erasr that was supposed to allow one to remove unwanted objects from a video? For a while, it was bundled with MEP or VPX.
I see nothing about it on the proDAD site, but there is this.
John CB
Hi John
Could you please expound on the Colour Corrrect Effect - what is it and how does it do rotoscoping?
I was specifically referring to your comment about making the sky bluer, and not about removing the "hair in the gate" problem, in that the Color Secondary Correction tool is creating an alpha mask (matte) of the scene ("behind the scenes") to isolate a certain colour and brightness area when the "add / subtract" dropper is used. This changes size and position as the movie scene changes over time similar to the mask that is created by the HDR tool and while it is not a true rotoscoping tool it can create effects similar to the old cine film techniques where rotoscoping was used to turn the background black and white while the subject retained full or changed colour.
Whilst the sky is often well separated from other parts of the scene Secondary CC can be used to add some blue saturation to the sky only. VPX gives you slightly more control with it's 3 way Low Medium and High colour wheels.
I have to say I find the VPX RGB / waveform parade indispensible when doing any sort of restoration of an images colour and tone.
Peter
