Blinking light reflection

Trizity wrote on 12/11/2013, 9:01 PM

So I was using my GoPro Hero the other night on a flight and forgot to turn off the blinking light that flashes when recording.

Very disappointed to see the reflection of that red light on the footage. Anyone have any tips to tone down/correct the flashing?

I am fairly new to SV12 so any tips or advice is appreciated. Thanks

Comments

larry-peter wrote on 12/11/2013, 9:37 PM

When I've had my camera tally light show up in reflections, the simplest way to minimize is with the Secondary Color Correction if it's the only bright, saturated red object. If you were shooting out the window at night, this should work pretty well for you.

Make your preview screen large enough to select just the reflection of the dot. Turn on the "View Mask" and ensure that you only have the dot selected. Turn the mask off and reduce the saturation and gain of the red light. Use the sliders, especially "smooth" to refine the selection and soften the edges. The fact that its blinking will make it impossible to completely hide but you should be able to get something watchable.

3d87c4 wrote on 12/11/2013, 9:42 PM

Black tape?

imaginACTION_films wrote on 12/11/2013, 11:17 PM

You can choose how many red lights operate in the settings menu of the GoPro. None, 1 - 4 as you wish.
David

wwjd wrote on 12/12/2013, 8:56 AM

depending on your footage, you could overlay same clip on another track, cookie cutter over the area, feather the edges, and slide the view left or right. this would be seen as a non-moving spot if there was any action going on though.

johnmeyer wrote on 12/12/2013, 7:27 PM

If the camera was locked down, you should be able to use this tutorial I made on how to remove a "stuck pixel" using a VirtualDub filter called Delogo:

Trizity wrote on 12/12/2013, 8:45 PM

Thanks for the quick reply. I'll give them a try this weekend...thankfully most of the lights in the background are city lights and there are minimal red lights. Cutting it out will leave a hole in the remaining image, but we'll see. I can use the practice if nothing else.

I've turned the lights off, always learn something the first time you do something. This was the first time I had used it at night.

johnmeyer wrote on 12/12/2013, 11:34 PM

[I]Cutting it out will leave a hole in the remaining image, but we'll see. I can use the practice if nothing else.[/I]Not if you are able to use the Delogo method I showed in my tutorial. Depending on circumstances, the fix can sometimes be near-perfect, as I showed in the tutorial.

Tech Diver wrote on 12/13/2013, 7:57 AM

If you can get your hands on Satish's old PluginPac, you will be able to apply VirtualDub filters from within Vegas itself. Note however, that I have not used his plugin for a number of years and do not know if it can work with VP12.

Peter

Trizity wrote on 1/7/2014, 3:44 PM

I did try the VirtualDub delogo filter and the PluginPac (which is now WAX, btw), but both present a challenge for my system - I'm using 64 bit Vegas, and from what I found, both only plug-in using the 32 bit version of Vegas.

I did go directly with virtualdub and apply the delogo filter. I was having good results with delogo, but it had several challenges that I found to be deal breakers. Since the original files were GoPro .mp4, they required conversion to .avi to work in VirtualDub. The file sizes were getting to be more than 60GB after applying the filter and resaving, making them unusable for my purposes.

Went with the cookie cutter suggestion, and for the most part, I'm happy with the result. The source video wasn't the best to start with since the night was somewhat foggy/misty, but if you are interested, here's the link to the final version:

john_dennis wrote on 1/12/2014, 11:43 PM

Thanks johnmeyer for posting this.

I went back and used this method from your tutorial to remove three spots on one of my videos from 2010. After returning from vacation I found that the sensor in my camera had gotten dirt or condensation on it leaving spots in the video. I got the sensor cleaned and spent a lot of time in Vegas fixing the sky using two copies of the media, the cookie cutter and keyframes. What a tedious job!

I used Virtualdub, the delogo plugin and the whole process was quick and effective.

johnmeyer wrote on 1/13/2014, 10:06 AM

John,

I'm glad it worked for you. "Delogo" was designed to remove the network logos and "bugs," but when doing that, even with a semi-transparent logo, the results are far from perfect. However, when removing small spots, like a bad pixel in a sensor, or dirt on the lens or sensor, you often end up with an near-perfect result, as you show in your video.

Also, when dealing with something that is perfectly fixed and never moves (network logos often move and are not present in every frame), you only have to create one mask so the workflow is really simple.