Remove text from frames in Vegas 6

cinemaphyle wrote on 4/6/2009, 6:03 PM

Anyone have any creative ideas how to achieve this? I've imported some video via analog capture, and there's some date/time stamp info in the frame that the customer is asking to have removed, if possible.

The simplest solution I could think of was to apply a 16:9 frame matte, but the customer would prefer to to keep the full frame.

Is there any way to mask or filter the text a la Photoshop based on the vectors around it, without - you know - actually manipulating each frame? Any plugins that might be useful for such a thing, maybe in tandem with keyframing? Something else?

This is a shot in the dark, from a novice/hobbiest trying to help a friend with some home video - so please bear that in mind and be kind! Any solutions or ideas greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Stefan
Vegas 6.0d
DVD-A 3.0b
Windows XP Pro (bare install with tsr's turned off via msconfig)
P4 2.8GHz, 2.25GB DDR RAM, nVidia 6200/256, Seagate pATA drives
ADS Pyro A/V Link API-550

Comments

Jim H wrote on 4/6/2009, 6:28 PM

Depending on the background behind the dates, you could place a duplicate version of the video above the original, mask "in"an area next to the offending dates and place that area over the dates with liberal feather on the mask. It will be obvious unless the background is very nondescript like trees or dark uniform color. But they may like it better than the dates.

rs170a wrote on 4/6/2009, 6:43 PM

There's a DeLogo filter available for VirtualDub that might be of some help.
Nothing will get rid of it completely but it's worth a try.

Mike

cinemaphyle wrote on 4/7/2009, 7:20 PM

Hi Jim and rs170a!

Thanks for the ideas! I honestly didn't think there'd be much said - only a confirmation of the inevitable (or slow purgatory spent cleaning each frame).

Anyway, I'll roll the ideas by my friend/client and see if he wants to go that deep or not, but very nice to know there's some potential solutions to add to my toolkit.

Cheers!
Stefan

farss wrote on 4/7/2009, 8:40 PM

The delogo filters will probably not work as they rely on the thing being removed being transparent I think. You can do it, there are techniques that can effectively "see" behind objects if the part of the scene that's obscured is ever in shot. Very time consumming and not practical I suspect in this case.

One simple solution is to simply blur that part of the frame, I see this done a lot with home movies on a local TV show and it's very easy to do in Vegas. It will leave a blurred region in the part of the frame in question but that may be acceptable.

Bob.

TorS wrote on 4/8/2009, 1:28 AM

Here's a couple of things to try:
Duplicate the track. Open event pan/crop for the upper track. Make sure to select No for Stretch to fill frame (under "Source"). Unselect Maintain aspect ratio and Size about center. Solo the track. Drag the edges of the frame until all you see is the unwanted time/date stamp.

Now you can try to color-correct the (white?) letters/numbers to make them blend with the background as much as possible. When you unsolo the track you will see your color corrections applied only where you want them. The rest of the frame comes from the lower track and is unaffected.

Another way forward: The good old Vegas text generator! Some of the numbers/letters will remain unchanged for 1 sec, 10 sec, 1 minute etc. Apply text events on several tracks above your video. Add numbers/letters in a similar font and mask out everything that is still for a minute or more. Then, on another track go to work on the shorter segments, the 10 sec intervals and so on. Whenever you think you've done well enough and don't want to bother with the 1/10 secs, simply mask them out with squares (black or adjusted to the background - there's a color picker under "properties"). This is more work, but not as much as dealing with every frame. And it's prettier than just masking out everything.

These two methods could also be combined.

Tor