Im editing some vids of my grandchildren on their new quad bikes -- the problem is that there is some obscene graffiti on a blank wall in the background -- Is there any way I can erase it?
Im using Adobe premiere 2 to edit

Alex C

You can't do it in Premiere but After Effects has a clone tool like the one in Photoshop where you can remove overhead cables, streetlights and tree branches coming out of peoples heads, but obviously this is with video and not a single image as in Photoshop. You could try masking around the area of the graffitti and then applying a Gaussian Blur to it, but if you have your grandchildren in the foreground you would need to mask around them and that is more hassle than enough. Was the footage shot using a tripod or was it recorded handheld? It easier to do things like masking if the camera is locked onto a tripod compared to holding it in your hands. Are the scenes long or short, you could try and apply some effects like inverting the scene so the colours are mixed up and the grafitti becomes less noticable, other than that you're stuck with it. Always check the foreground and background in a scene in future before you hit the record button.

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Thanks for reply Nikosony
The footage was shot - hand held - The back ground appears at differant times as the kids are driving past the graffiti at various times in the movie -- My son in law shot the film and left it to me to edit otherwise I would have spotted the graffiti and dodged it - I dont have after effects and im not sure how to go about masking the area to blur it out --- Ive already transferred the film from tape to disk and dont have the original tapes - Will maybe download a trial of after effects

Cheers Alex C

You could just use Marc's tutorial and defocus the offending bit when they come into viewlike thye do on the news to keep someone anonymous. You know, blur the image at that spot.

you can certainly do that in Premiere.

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I'm not young enough to know everything!

theres a plug-in called 'witness protection' in borris fx that would work perfectly in premire.. but thats not much help if you havnt got borris!!


***alan - when our we going to see this 'preditor effect' guide from you???!! would be great to see!!

1 thing that you could try and can definitely do in Premiere is to use a track matte created using the titler. Type in the offensive words using a font that is as close as possible to the graffiti and lay it over the top and keyframe it to follow the action, apply a small amount of feather and then the track matte filter, this will make the words transparent so if possible grab a still of the wall without the graffiti and lay it underneath to fill the gaps.

There are more steps than this but the manual should give you the information to get it done.

What ever you do it will be a bit of a chore, you probably need to ask yourself, can the scenes be cut completely or at least cut down to make the work load less.

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I suspect whatever you do, the 'fix' will be visible and probably more distracting than the rude words. I suspect most people wont see the words, if the focus of the pans is the quads it is likely they will be missed. People watching the vid will be looking at the bikes, not the graff.

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Thanks for all the tips guys --- Did what Miwhel suggested - cut the offending scenes out completely - The graff wasn't text ' it was outlines of nudes - not nice to show your neighbours!I didn't want the vice squad visiting !!!

Cheers Alex C

PS--

Here is a still of graffiti (Not Nice)

Attached Images

graff.gif (22.1 KB, 11 views)