Hair Removal

[Jon Rosenbloom]

 

 

 

 

Any thoughts on removing the hair (in the gate) in these shots? (We had an fine AC, but he missed it.) I have the feeling that it's a pretty simple operation given today's technology, but probably more difficult if you don't want to spend any money and just want to try it solo on Final Cut Pro.

 

Thanks.

Edited April 16, 2008 by Jon Rosenbloom

[Michael Nash]

but probably more difficult if you don't want to spend any money and just want to try it solo on Final Cut Pro.

 

You just need to "clone pixels" from either side of the hair, in this case. There's more than one way to do it. In the video realm you usually create a matte the size/shape of the hair, create a new video layer and slide that image left or right as few pixels as possible, and matte the two layers together. There may be other post tools even easier than that.

[Jon Rosenbloom]

Thanks, Michael. I wonder if this isn't something the editor should know/ be in charge of. Also, I didn't mention that this master shot runs two minutes, dollies towards the mirror, and then pans 180 degrees back into the room. Well, it is a film school project, I guess they'll learn a lot about cloning pixels!

 

How long would this take in a proper DaVinci 2K suite?

[Michael Nash]

It's not really the editor's job in the professional world at least. Usually projects go through some kind of final polishing pass that includes color correction and "dust-busting."

 

I can't vouch for these, but here's some info:

 

http://www.mattias.nu/plugins/

 

http://www.2-popforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80011

[Jon Rosenbloom]

Yeah, I suppose it's more VFX, or Post-Production Supervisor territory. But, it's a student film, so those positions are rolled into that of the (very nervous) director, who comes crying to me about it. As it happens, I did a pretty nice job removing the hair from the stills just using the software that came w/ our little point and shoot digital camera. Took about 5 minutes per, and that was first time I've ever used it.

[John Sprung]

Some MIT guys wrote the killer application for dirt/hair recognition and correction. It does minor dirt fixes just about perfectly, and can even tackle things that look close to unsalvageable. Their company is called MTI, everybody in TV has been using it for years:

 

http://www.mtifilm.com/correct.html

 

This being a student film, maybe see if some post house will give you a freebie pass thru the MTI box.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Jon Rosenbloom]

That looks cool, is it very different from Shake?