Fix a hot pixel from CCD.

DGrob wrote on 9/1/2003, 7:33 PM
I have an 11 minute home easter egg hunt with a hot pixel(s) located at
-291/308. On dark images the spot show white with a smidgen of red corona. It is fixed both in size and location. I can cover the spot with a 28pt period from basderville text media generator. I have since had the camera repaired.

Rendered to *.avi with veg file and media files intact. Can I drop the render into the timeline and somehow create a fuzzy dot that will blend the changing colors playing in the video around the spot and make the darned, irritating, peristant thing go away (or at least drop its prominance).

DMN Vegas forum suggested a media text period, sized and overlayed with color keyed properties. But I can't seem to get keyframes locked to the timeline (the icon is greyed out).

I'm playing around with the cookie cutter, hoping to size and locate a dot which I might be able to keframe to adjacent colors, but frankly, am a bit confused on how the track layout should look. Any ideas greatly appreciated.

DGrob



Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 9/1/2003, 8:20 PM
I would try a combination of blur and the cookie cutter. If you got the time... then using key frames to change color as needed should do it.
johnmeyer wrote on 9/1/2003, 8:23 PM
Given that you know the exact X-Y location of the pixel, perhaps you could create a 720x480 bitmap in your photo editor (assuming you're using NTSC), and create a single black pixel dot at (291,308). Save this as a PNG file with transparency enabled and use it as a mask so that only the bad pixel shows through. Use the color corrector plugin to manipulate the one pixel and then put your original video on the bottom track so this one pixel gets overlaid back into the video.
DataMeister wrote on 9/1/2003, 10:01 PM
Once you have the mask set up in johnmeyer's suggestion you might could offset that video track by a couple of pixels (leaving the mask in place). Rather than using the color corrector it would give that bad pixel the colors of the pixels directly in the direction of the offset. Try both and see which one looks the least noticable.

JBJones
musicvid10 wrote on 9/2/2003, 8:27 AM
You could try to preprocess in VirtualDub with one of the logo removal tools. I haven't tried this with anything as small as a single pixel, however.
DGrob wrote on 9/2/2003, 9:35 AM
Good ideas all. I'll get after it and post any promising results (probably not the only one to ever encounnter this). My real life will be intruding heavily in my schedule for the next couple of days, I'lll be back asap.

Thanks everyone, DGrob
johnmeyer wrote on 9/2/2003, 5:08 PM
Wow, this is the second time this has happened in the past week. After advising DGrob earlier in this thread, I ended up having almost the same problem myself. My problem was a small speck of dust on the lens or projector (I was transferring film). It stayed in exactly the same location, so it was similar to your problem. For my problem, I found that using the DeLogo filter (which I was just helping another Vegas user understand) worked perfectly. See my several posts in this thread:

DeLogo Filter
DGrob wrote on 9/3/2003, 4:00 PM
johnmeyer: Hmmmm. The Delogo filter seems to require a stationary image. I've been working a blurred/cookie-cutter circle sized at .007 on a duplicate track overlayed and offset a few ticks to one side to try to "automate" the color correction process. The problem with my CCD generated event is that it's a pure white dot with a "dancing" red halo. The event is stationary and continuous, but exhibits erratic halo dancing intensity. I've actually got a good deal of the minor sequences corrected quite satisfactorily. A few lingering moments of shaded scenes are all that remain.

Thanks, DGrob

PS Ride the wave - do a post about hitting the lottery, these things come in threes.

johnmeyer wrote on 9/3/2003, 9:41 PM
The Delogo filter seems to require a stationary image.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. This filter was designed to remove the station ID logo that most networks place on broadcast video. The logo is stationary at the same X-Y position, usually in the lower left corner. Similarly, your hot pixel, and any halo around it, is stationary at one location on the screen. The neat thing about the delogo filter is that you can make the mask a few pixels larger than the defect that you are trying to mask, and it automatically blends the surrounding pixels into that space. Thus, the bad pixel can be totally black, pink, red, almost correct -- in short, anything. It will be replaced by a blend of the surrounding pixels. For a defect as small as a few pixels (my film dust spot was about 2x3 pixels) you almost certainly won't be able to spot the fix -- it's that good.
DGrob wrote on 9/4/2003, 9:37 AM
Johnmeyer - When I think of a logo or dust mote, I picture a quiet, stable image over time. My little spot is quiet animated, within its tiny confines. Your point is well taken though, it seems I'm going to need the Delogo filter sometime or another. Gonna give it a go on the remaining corrections. Thanks again for the tip. DGrob