Trying to re-touch in Final Cut
 

Hi

I have a shot in my film that has a small lens flare that I've been trying to elimniate in Final Cut. The shot is a push-in on an office worker's feet at a desk. They are wearing grey trousers and the lens flare appears on one of their trouser leg - the flare is pretty small just - in relation to the leg it is about 50mm in diameter.

I've been trying a few different techniques (like using garbage mattes and darkening the area on a seperate track) to try and get rid of it but none actually work very well. It's made much more difficult in that the lighting and position changes during the shot due to the push-in. Does anyone have any suggestins...

If its not too long a scene, try export out as targa sequence and touch up in Photoshop.

Or you'd have to use After Effects or Commotion...

My 2cents.

Hmmm - good point. The amount of time I've wasted trying to do it in Final Cut I could easily have done it frame by frame in Photoshop. The shot is only about 5 seconds long.

So what's the process/technique for outputting to Photoshop, and then bringing the retouched frames back into FC (I am fully fluent in Photoshop but have only ever used it with still photography)?

Simple. Any decent NLE, and i'm assuming FCP should allow you to export as a targa sequence (in numerical order). 25fps or 30fps. So in your case, 25/30 x 5 seconds. If it's a simple touch-up and you're fiesty in photoshop, you should be done in a jiffy. Simple Import it back into FCP when you done. FCP should be intelligent enough to read the files back in it's numerical order and import it as an animated sequence (just like the original source).

Actually the software "Painter" (don't know if this is still around. MetaCreations?) will allow you to import a quicktime as is, touch up and save. Painter is pretty much photoshop with more paint brushes. And... Premeire will export a filmstrip file for edit in photoshop.

I don't have Painter - I was under the impression that was an inferior product available on PC.

Don't quite know. haven't touched it in yonks. The Photoshop route i mentioned should do you just fine.

Happy cloning.

If the position of the leg is 'fixed' you could just output one frame to photoshop and create a small mask for the flare then import the mask and overlay it on the rest of the footage.

The leg is fixed but the camera pushes in - the 'light and shade' of the trousers changes in the shot due to this. But it's a good thought, thanks. Maybe I could get away with doing three or four (eg light, mid, dark etc) bring those in and fade between them over the course of the shot.

Even though it was only 5 secs the thought of re-touching 150 images didn't particularly excite me...

<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Lee : Actually the software "Painter" (don't know if this is still around. MetaCreations?) -->>>

Sadly, Metacreations is long gone and their products scattered to the four winds :-( Painter was actually bought by Corel, as was Bryce. I was upset to learn that Corel recently dropped the Mac version of Bryce, and I wonder if the PC version will soon meet with the same fate (since you have to dig pretty deep on their website to even find it). Cararra was sold to a company named Evoia. Not sure where their other products ended up.

Now in another interesting twist of fate, Corel was in trouble recently but was bailed out by a large investment by Microsoft. What a surprise!... shortly afterwards they announced they were dropping their version of Linux. One has to wonder how much longer WordPerfect will survive...

It wouldn't look good, from a monopoly point of view, to have just one word processing program with 99.9% of the market. Microsoft will still run the risk of being split up if they become too dominant in too many markets.

I had a dabble with Painter years back. It seemed like a great application. Pity the power of a company like adobe wasn't behind it's further development.

I've noticed Boyd is a huge fan of the Great Bryce (had a peep at your great website). i remember the old days when Bryce first came out. Every other student had Bryce-inspired director presentations. Hah. Then came poser. And that's a whole different story all over again.

Thanks Kevin. Yes, I got hooked on Bryce a few years ago. In the middle of a big project last summer with lots of animation I didn't want to upgrade. So when I finally decided I should get version 5 this winter, I was shocked to learn that it isn't available for the Mac anymore, which I thought was strange since I recently read a review of it. I had to surf around to a bunch of online retailers to find someone who still had the Mac upgrade version in stock; the big places like MacMall, MacWarehouse, ClubMac, etc. are all sold out. FWIW, version 5 seems to run just fine under OS X and it also appears to do a nicer job of rendering textures.

Ah yes, Poser is another of the great Metacreations products. It's now sold by Curious Labs....

Sorry to have to revert to the original topic but I've been having a look at trying to ouput as a targa sequence but can't seem to be able to - the only Export options are either 'Quicktime' or 'Final Cut Movie'. Is it just that Final Cut Express doesn't allow this or where is the option for outputting as Targa?

Clone Tool
 

Just read a review at www.lafcpug.com written by Ken Stone about the new Clone tool from CHV-Electronics (http://www.chv-plugins.com/index.html). It's supposedly just like the Clone tool in Photoshop only better and is for use on videos. They have a demo that you can test. May be the answer to your challenge.

And by the way speaking of MetaCreations, whatever happened to Kai Krouse?

Mickey