Hi Everyone,

Now, firstly I'm pretty sure I know the answer already, however it's always nice to get some other opinions.

Someone has just asked me to have a look at some footage they need "repairing". It badly needs some colour correcting (as the footage is completely washed out) and they also would like to remove the boom microphone that is in shot. The sequence goes for around 22 seconds.

The colour correction part is simple. Well, it's actually hard to make the footage look good, but from a technical point of view it's quite easy. The hard bit is removing the microphone from shot.

I believe there are only two options: rotoscoping, and enlarging the footage so that the microphone is no longer in shot. Rotoscoping will take heaps of time (574 frames) and enlarging the image will dramatically affect the [already bad] quality. Is there any other options? I was planning to either use Photoshop to "paint out" the microphone frame by frame then colour correct, or enlarge the footage in Final Cut Pro then colour correct. Any other magical ideas that I haven't thought of?

The footage was shot on DigiBeta, however I have only seen a H.264 version of it.

Sample Frame:
http://hyperupload.com/download/0279a56d68/DL_Sequence__001.png.html

For those who plan to suggest it: this footage can not be re-shot.

If anyone has any brilliant ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks!

Chris!

I wasn't able to load the image, but you might try painting over the mic in photoshop on one frame, painting on a separate layer. Then bring the layer into AE and then motion track it to the shot (if it's handheld). You can then refine it with the AE paint tools if necessary. This works nicely on lots of shots.

Obviously, if you have a changing background, this doesn't work.

There is a set of other standard tricks, like a little vignetting, some blurring, and so on.

I really think this is really difficult., the boom is REALLY inside the frame. Ask your client if you can add a 16:9 mask to that interview, I think it would be the best.

Good luck