Dirt/Dust/Hair removal?

I'm shooting products on black plexiglass.

Every tiny bit of dust and debris shows up. Is there an easy fix in Davinci? Some AI plugin that solves this issue?

For additional points, if anyone has any suggestions of how to keep plexiglass dust/dirt/hair free that would be great too for future reference.

Video reference of a product from today :

Can’t really see it on yt’s default resolution on my iPad (720p or 1080p). Cranking up the res makes them clear.

But what’s more concerning to me is the black levels of whatever your object is on (Fusion?) which I can see when you’re rotating (iPad in Reference Mode) —poor pic but you get the idea:



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As for how to remove dust, I have no idea.

But stopping dust is easy: A HEPA 14 air cleaner with a max rating around ~400m3/hr (so you can run it lower for less noise) sucks all dust, hairs etc out of the room.

Can’t really see it on yt’s default resolution on my iPad (720p or 1080p). Cranking up the res makes them clear.

But what’s more concerning to me is the black levels of whatever your object is on (Fusion?) which I can see when you’re rotating (iPad in Reference Mode) —poor pic but you get the idea:



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Hey thanks for your message. I posted another thread in the "cinematography" section about the troubles I'm having with shooting dark/black products on a black background.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by the black levels of whatever the object is on? Do you mean the plexiglass that's underneath or the black backdrop behind?

Any insight/help is much appreciated, I'm very new to this kind of work as I usually shoot only in natural light.

I'm shooting products on black plexiglass.

Every tiny bit of dust and debris shows up. Is there an easy fix in Davinci? Some AI plugin that solves this issue?

For additional points, if anyone has any suggestions of how to keep plexiglass dust/dirt/hair free that would be great too for future reference.

Video reference of a product from today :

I don't know from personal experience, but friend tells me there are various anti dust spray solutions that will repeal dust from surfaces for a short time, might be ideal to do before the shoot. I don't know about the brands in North America, I'm from Europe.

It depends on the shot. But you have several options.

In the Resolve Studio version there is a category of plus ins called "revival". This category consists of plugins that let you fix common technical, damage, and quality problems that bedevil programs being finished, remastered, or restored.

Here is my attempt with: Automatic Dirt Removal (Studio Version Only)

The Automatic Dirt Removal plugin uses optical flow technology to target and repair temporally unstable bits of dust, dirt, hair, tape hits, and other unwanted artifacts that last for one or two frames and then disappear. All repairs are made while maintaining structurally consistent detail in the underlying frame, resulting in a high quality restoration of the image. Fortunately, despite its sophistication, this is a relatively easy plugin to use; just drop the plugin on a shot, adjust the parameters for the best results, and watch it go.

It will get rid of the dust easily, but some larger dust particles can be a problem because to get rid of them you have to also attack some of the edges of the product. This leaves you with two options that are pretty quick. Run the plug in over everything, and than use loose garbage masks to protect the product itself. Since the plexiglass is dark and more or less featureless, it should be fast enough to do that.

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Another tool that is great if you have static shots where there is no camera movement.

Dust Buster (Studio Version Only)

This plugin is also designed to eliminate dust, dirt, and other imperfections and artifacts from clips, but it does so only with user guidance, for clips where the Automatic Dirt Removal plugin yields unsatisfactory results. This guidance consists of moving through the clip frame-by-frame and drawing boxes around imperfections you want to eliminate. Once you’ve drawn a box, the offending imperfection is auto-magically eliminated in the most seamless way possible. This works well for dirt and dust, but it also works for really big stains and blotches, as seen below.

So you can either do it frame by frame manually or if its a static shot, you just draw it over an area where the dust spot is.

Third party tools might be Neat Video Noise Reduction which just Dust and Scratches removal feature, but it might have the same problem with very large dust where it might attack product elements as well. So again you probably would have to mask it, still a fast way.

You can try TopazVideoAI maybe, but I'm not sure how it deals with dust. You can also check out Filmworkz DVO OFX Performance Pack v1.5. Its what Hollywood uses for lot of restoration. It has some tools that can help.

If you work in Fusion Page you can do a lot with free version if you don't have access to studio, and you have more options, but it requires some work and skill with fusion.

For situations where you have various dust and hair problems there is paint tool with multiclone mode where you manually paint or clone it out per frame basis. Similar process as Dust Buster (Studio Version Only) that I mentioned, but it can be done with free version of Resolve if that is a problem, and when you paint you have more control over irregular shapes, like not only dust but also hair etc. Additionally you can use viewer lut to gain the viewer and see the dust in dark footage like yours. Making sure you don't miss anything. You don't change the footage itself, just preview of it. Quite useful for this kind of work.

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There are other options in fusion, but it requires more skill to set up, like frequency separation.

how to keep plexiglass dust/dirt/hair free

Swiffer?

Can you elaborate on what you mean by the black levels of whatever the object is on? Do you mean the plexiglass that's underneath or the black backdrop behind?

Did you do the rotation in resolve or in camera?


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Can you elaborate on what you mean by the black levels of whatever the object is on? Do you mean the plexiglass that's underneath or the black backdrop behind?

Did you do the rotation in resolve or in camera?


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Hey, in resolve - but working out a way to make that less obvious! ha

That’s what I was talking about— because of the black levels, I can see the edges of it being rotated in post.


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That’s what I was talking about— because of the black levels, I can see the edges of it being rotated in post.

I don't know of a solution except to neutralize the black levels and drop them down maybe 1 unit, perhaps with Log Shadows -- not enough to "grind" them, but enough to get them down below the point where black level differences show up.

Trying to fix on-set lighting problems like this in post is fraught with problems. They have to watch out for glare, bad angles, uneven illumination, all kinds of factors. What we used to do is have the shot up on a monitor, then take the display out of detent and raise and lower brightness (black level) so we could make absolutely sure the lighting was as even as possible. If it was uneven, we'd fix it.

You can try to fix this with tracking masks and all that, but it's tedious and time consuming. It CAN be done, it's just not a lot of fun. I've had to do this before with baked-in film titles where the titles were shot unevenly in the optical-printing process, and I had no choice but to trace around every letter and drop the black level around them so they appeared to be floating in "blackness," as opposed to having bits of cardboard enter and leave the frame unpredictably. As long as we could obscure the objects outside the main objects -- wire stands, motors, pieces of velvet, cardboard light cutters -- the end results were fine.

In the o.p.'s case, if this is a camera end lens floating in space, I'd cut a mask as tightly as I could and roto it in as seamlessly as possible. There are cases where it probably would have made more sense to shoot the object against green screen and then replace the green screen with a black limbo curtain or something. When photographed in real life, at least you have natural light wrap happening in a real 3-dimensional space, and that helps maintain it looking real.

That’s what I was talking about— because of the black levels, I can see the edges of it being rotated in post.


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Yup I guessed! Trying to work out a way doing it with more of a gradient going from the "black" behind the product to the complete black of the nothingness as due to the space limitations I have - making it completely black isn't going to work

That’s what I was talking about— because of the black levels, I can see the edges of it being rotated in post.

I don't know of a solution except to neutralize the black levels and drop them down maybe 1 unit, perhaps with Log Shadows -- not enough to "grind" them, but enough to get them down below the point where black level differences show up.

Trying to fix on-set lighting problems like this in post is fraught with problems. They have to watch out for glare, bad angles, uneven illumination, all kinds of factors. What we used to do is have the shot up on a monitor, then take the display out of detent and raise and lower brightness (black level) so we could make absolutely sure the lighting was as even as possible. If it was uneven, we'd fix it.

You can try to fix this with tracking masks and all that, but it's tedious and time consuming. It CAN be done, it's just not a lot of fun. I've had to do this before with baked-in film titles where the titles were shot unevenly in the optical-printing process, and I had no choice but to trace around every letter and drop the black level around them so they appeared to be floating in "blackness," as opposed to having bits of cardboard enter and leave the frame unpredictably. As long as we could obscure the objects outside the main objects -- wire stands, motors, pieces of velvet, cardboard light cutters -- the end results were fine.

In the o.p.'s case, if this is a camera end lens floating in space, I'd cut a mask as tightly as I could and roto it in as seamlessly as possible. There are cases where it probably would have made more sense to shoot the object against green screen and then replace the green screen with a black limbo curtain or something. When photographed in real life, at least you have natural light wrap happening in a real 3-dimensional space, and that helps maintain it looking real.

I totally hear you. The issue I found with fixing on set is I just simply don't have enough space to get the products away from the background so I've realised the infinite black look I was hoping for isn't really possible. I'm going to try and either mask tightly or do I gradient mask type thing so the difference between the black levels is more seamless.

You could also put it all on a almost-black background to match the darkest part of the footage.


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I totally hear you. The issue I found with fixing on set is I just simply don't have enough space to get the products away from the background so I've realised the infinite black look I was hoping for isn't really possible. I'm going to try and either mask tightly or do I gradient mask type thing so the difference between the black levels is more seamless.

Yes, that's actually a key for product shots and other tight close-ups like this: you need a much bigger area to shorten the depth of field and make sure the background is totally soft. We definitely get this problem when people try to shoot against a white background and then complain that the background isn't uniformly white enough. In a huge space, this is a lot easier to do.

I think rotoing a tight shape around the object is possible, but I'll hope it's not a long shot. If it's just 10-20 seconds, that's not the end of the world. If it's several minutes, that's very tough.