How to remove dust spot from my video ?
 

I have shot a couple scenes and after getting the tape at home, I realised that there were visible dust spot on the lens that I didn't see when shooting the scenes.

There are two or three small "spots" of dust, but one in particular is a round piece and is quite noticeable. I just couldn't see see this while shooting.

Is there a way to remove this dust in a cheap and effective way?

If it's all in an area like the sky or a solid colour (and if the camera was on a tripod and not panned/zoomed much) you could try masking with a small section of same coloured sky (copied onto an overlay clip and then shaped and positioned appropriately, feathering the edges to blend it in etc. - a pretty standard technique and very easy to do in Vegas or any other NLE). I'm a bit rusty on Vegas now as I mostly use FCP these days but I'm sure others on here can walk you through it if you need more help, step by step - just let us know.

If the dust spot(s) have multiple and moving backgrounds in various clips, another obvious option is to crop in on the frames to completely exclude them...but they are rarely so "thoughtful" in their positioning on the lens and usually go for "maximum visual impact" from my experience! (i.e. the worst possible place in the shot - like on the end of someone's nose!).

One reason why I find an excellent camera viewfinder so important, especially in HD, is to check for things like this, but you can still miss dust specs easily even on a good viewfinder like on my EX3. I always eyeball my lens before I start too, and clean if required - an experience like yours on a critical shot taught me the value of that last step in a painful way once! Good luck!

This problem can be fixed in a good graphics program such as TVPaint which I am familiar with, or Corel, which I am not and there are othere applications well suited for such work, but to do that you would need to dish out about $ 1,000 for the software and $ 400 for a decent tablet ... but as you made clear, this would be out of your price range... so your choices are probably limited.

you can create a mask image to allow video to punch through just over the dust spots and then put another copy of the same shot with a position off-set on the track underneath.
Paul

Thanks for the answers so far. The dust spots have moving backgrounds, so this is not easy to fix. I have not tried so solve this problem before, so I'll try to use some of the ideas I've got until now. But buying an expensive software is out of range for me.

I'm going to use more time to remove dust from the lens of my HD-camera before shooting any scenes in the future......

You could try the noise reduction plugin from NewBlue FX - it''s not all that expensive. That might work to smooth it out a bit. At anyrate, you can demo it for free to see if it would in fact work.

Since you have a moving background, you could also try masking around the dust areas and then applying a slight blur to the masked area to smooth out the dust spot to an aproximation. You have to use a mask that blends to the surrounding area and very slight blurring.

I'm able to mask around the dust area, but this masked point is only black. I've tried to adjust the area, but I'm not able to change this point. I still appears black. It's something here I don't understand.
I can mask an area with RAW and jpg-pictures in Photoshop etc. and change these areas, but not in this video program. I really don't know exactly "how to".

I've got it. Now I'm able to mask and adjust in several ways. Maybe this will help me to remove dust spots from my movie clips. Thanks for help.

Definitely a good topic to remind everyone to check your lenses before you shoot.

Had a simlar issue and the masking worked great. Thanks for the heads up members.

Good going Leif. It takes everyone awhile to figure out masking the first time around. It took me quite awhile to get comfortable with it - but I have a better understanding because of it.