Removing Water Spots

Videoimpressions wrote on 1/5/2008, 4:29 PM

After returning home from a wonderful trip to the land of "liquid sunshine" (e.g, Hawaii), I have begun to edit my footage (mini-DV). Unfortunately, the liquid sunshine evidently placed itself and dried on my camcorder lens several times and I guess that I neglected wipe it off as often as I should have. Nevertheless, several times throughout my footage I notice evident water spots (mostly when the camcorder is turned towards the source of light, and much less noticeable if at all when the source light is behind my back). Is there a Sony Vegas filter that can be used to eliminate or greatly reduce noticing the water spots? If not, what do you Vegas gurus suggest I do to help salvage this footage? Any ideas? I really do not want to over use an effect to call attention to the fact that I am trying to fix something in post, so I am hoping that someone can offer a realistic way to help me out. While the water spots ARE quite evident, they are not overpowering enough to TOTALLY ruin the shots, but enough to be slightly annoying. Thanks in advance!!

Comments

farss wrote on 1/5/2008, 6:56 PM

Probably your first step would be to provide a frame from your video for people to try various approaches.

Bob.

Jøran Toresen wrote on 1/5/2008, 7:18 PM

There are several VirtualDub plug-ins that can remove “logos”. Maybe you can use one of these to remove water spots? Two examples are Delogo and Logoaway.

Jøran Toresen

riredale wrote on 1/6/2008, 10:13 AM

You're probably gonna have another, more serious issue--if you shot the video on a camcorder with optical or digital stabilization (which virtually all do these days), then those waterspots don't stand still. They move or jiggle around a bit as your camera tries to smooth out your handheld shakes.

Dan Sherman wrote on 1/7/2008, 9:21 AM

The lesson here is prevention.
The first thing you do before a shoot is clean the lens or the UV or other filter.
Lens tissue and cleaner are in your camera bag ALWAYS.
Make it a routine to clean each time you unpack the camera.
Sorry if that seems too obvious.
It's one of the basics of getting good video, and should be as routine as doing a white balance.
Which is why you have a white card in your camera bag at all times.

craftech wrote on 1/7/2008, 3:04 PM

I have used ROR and it works really well.

John