Hiding perspiration spots on shirt, arm hides and unhides

I have been fighting this for months, but I'm now down to the wire. I have gone through two dozen YouTube videos about hiding blemishes and using IntelliTrack. My situation is slightly different. Also, I'm fairly new to Resolve...but an expert at Final Cut Pro. I've also tried using ChatGPT for answers...and their answers are wrong.

I recorded some video of a presenter, and during the recording he started to perspire, and I did not notice this until I was back at my studio (1,000 miles away), so I can't re-record. So about the last five minutes of the video has spots in several different locations on the shirt, but as he is presenting, his arm goes in front of the spots. I know this should be fairly easy to do, but there are too many people on YouTube with recommendations for doing this that either that don't apply, or are very basic and only deal with a single blemish.

When using IntelliTrack, I use the forward tracking button, but it stops and throws an error as soon as the spot is behind his arm. I have tried doing this frame by frame, but am not sure how to handle the frames where his arm is obscuring the spots. Do I use separate trackers for each segment that's not continuous?

I have seen tutorials recommending use of the Planar Tracker, Surface Tracker, Point Tracker...the Surface Tracker freaks out when his arm covers the spot, so I'm not sure if I can use that. Planar Tracker would assume the surface is flat, right? Point Tracker or IntelliTrack seem to be the best option. And I am currently looking at the documentation, but it doesn’t talk about what to do when the motion path is interrupted.

Also, the shape changes over time...the spot starts out pretty small, but gets larger.

Thank you in advance...

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Removing the spots can be done in verity of ways. That is less of a problem. Tracking them is also something that can be done in differnt ways and its less of a problem. Combining it all might be the biggest challenge. Depending on the footage and how much fabric and lighting changes and how many times hands occlude the spots.

Magic Mask 1 and certianly Magic Mask 2 can be used to either track the spots themselves or track the shirt at which point you automatically have an occlusion mask, avoiding distractions getting in the way of actual trackers you can apply after the fact.

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After you have either selected the spots or whole shirt and only shirt with enough eroded edge to avoid any other problems, than you can try to track the spots. If at some point the spots are completely covered by hands than you will most likley have to segment your tracking. There are options like vector warp that can be used as well which both tracks and can stabilize for paint out work. But its a bit processor intensive and for longer footage may not be worth it.

What I would try is use Magic Mask to isolate the shirt. Use tracker to track the spots when visible. Apply patch replacer which is very fast to render and does great job of blending texture and color by cloning/healing from nearby patch. depending on how fabric is moving you may have to play with the direction and settings of the source.

By the way if you use tracker in fusion you can do append track to skip over areas that are not tractable and it should extrapolate inbetween frames which if the spot is roughly in the same area should be enough.

Another option is to use object remover. Which is similar, but less powerful to Mocha Pro replace module, which would be ideal for this by the way. But patch replacer can be used to create initial clean plate, or you can export the frame and use photoshop or something similar, and than use object remover to match the lighting of just one still frame over time.

If the fabric is folding too much you can try surface tracker to isolate and track a patch and than use patch replacer.

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You can also use paint tool in fusion and of course all else applies. Tracking and all that.

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Another method that might work, but may not, is to isolate shirt with magic mask and clone parts of surrounding area over the spots. depending on how much lighting changes from source to destination and or fabric folds it may work or may not work, but its the fastest and easiest method.

From the help menu you can open manual and in Resolve Studio 19.1 manual,

Color Page Effects | Chapter 150 Sizing and Image Stabilization page 3280

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You can see how to clone a patch on the same footage using itself as source.

Using Node Sizing to duplicate a windowed area of an image to cover a blemish:
1 Create a new node.
2 Open the Window palette, create a Circular window, and then shrink and reposition it to surround a feature you want to remove.
3 Open the Tracking palette, and track the window to follow the feature to be removed.
4 After the track is complete, now move the window to an adjacent area of clean detail that’s right next to the feature you want to remove. This is the area of the image you’re going to duplicate and cover the unwanted feature with.
5 Now, open the Sizing palette, choose Node Sizing from the mode drop-down, check Key Lock, and use the Sizing parameters to move a duplicate of the windowed area to cover up the unwanted feature.

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Thank you both so much…I understand a lot of what you’re describing, so let me see if I can get that to work!

I did finally get Tracking to work (not IntelliTrack), but I cannot find a way to simply advance a few frames and insert a keyframe. Maybe this is easy and I’ve just overlooked it?

Alright, I am successfully using Magic Mask in the Color section, and it’s doing a decent job. Definitely goes a bit slower than I’m used to, but this should save me tons of time. I pulled an all-nighter last night trying to figure this out. Thanks again!

I may have made a mistake...I ran the Magic Mask...it took about 15 minutes for a pretty short clip, but I clicked a button for "Faster" or "Better" and all of a sudden the reddish mask on the video disappeared. I see that there is a red line down in the Magic Mask Window, but I can't figure out how to tell if the mask is gone, or just hiding somewhere?

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Have you used magic mask before? There are few rules to follow.

a) There are two types of frames in magic mask. Reference frames or the ones you use to make strokes / dots. These do not get cached and are more or less indestructible. Allowing for repeatable tracking.

b) There are also the tracked frames in between, which gets stored as cached images on disk. For faster playback etc. As long as you don't invalidate source on which they are based on, they will work fine. Invaliding the source breaks the link between cached frames and new images. If that happens , the footage needs to be re-tracked and because first kind of frames, the reference frames are not invalidated and are protected, they can be used as "reference" and tracking again should look as before. With obvious penalty of having to re-track.

The good thing about it is that you don't have to keep all the cached images forever as the project is finished and they can be deleted while the reference frames remain, for future re-tracking in case you need it.

Many have invalidated the frames and I won't weigh in on what Blackmagic should or should not do, since this is how it was since Magic Mask was introduced. Instead of using vector masks, they went with bitmap masks, which have their advantages, like tracking motion blur and various organic edges, while the downside is they have to be cached as bitmap images.

Simple rule is , don't mess with the source You can do almost anything downstream from magic mask and very little upstream, unless you prepare in advance. Usually it comes down to good workflow habits.

In your case when you changed from better to faster, or better mode you have re-armed the panel for tracking. Reference frames should remain, tracked in between frames will need to be re-tracked to match the new settings. The three button menu in the magic mask panel has more options for managing it.

Generally speaking. You can work downstream from magic mask, which is how it was intended. This also means not changing footage in the edit page etc.

If you must do that there are several workarounds. Magic Mask in fusion will use source from media pool so it won't matter what you do outside of fusion it will keep the tracking intact.

Once you tracked on color page, you can render in place in the edit page to back in the mask. You can also first make compound clip on the edit page, open the compound clip and track it and than work on the external protective shell of it and mask won't be invalidated since its tracked inside of it. You can also export mask as image sequance and reuse it as external matte. In fusion for example. Generally its best to be working downstream and you should be good.

P.S.
It has occurred to me that this is a longer clip section you have to track so considering the shirt is blue, it maybe possible to get a key using one of the qualifier like 3D keyer and key out the blur shirt, which would be faster than magic mask tracking and probably better for longer clip. Magic mask was originally meant to be help for power window+tracker+qualifier image selection for grading. But people started using it for other things including rotoscoping. But older methods still work in many cases so maybe try that.

I am extremely grateful for the extra information. I was not even aware of Magic Mask until today…I used to be a Systems Engineer for multimedia at Apple, hence the knowledge of Final Cut Pro and Motion, so I’ve only been using DVR since last August. I’m still shaky on some of the color concepts, but what I’ve learned with DVR has helped me immensely. I plan to buy a couple of the Pocket cameras when I get another video project…I now don’t buy fancy shoes…too many fun toys over here in video-land.

How true.

Here is a nice little collection of few videos that I would suggest you take a look when you find the time. They cover essentially three powerful tools in color page for approaching color grading. Tracking, power windows and qualifiers. With few other videos which added magic mask to the equation to enhance this further. Now Magic Mask 2 and Depth Mask 2 are even more improved for even more precise masking so its quite powerful tool set. Of course if you throw in fusion to the mix, its quite a bit power with only few basic toolsets. It should help to get familiar with some of the concepts in resolve and how skillful colorists leverage them.

David Torcivia Advanced Color Correction in DaVinci Resolve

David Torcivia Color Correction Shot Breakdown

David Torcivia Using Parallel Nodes in DaVinci Resolve

Using Magic Mask & Qualifiers in Resolve 17

Magic Mask 2

How Offloading VFX into Color Grading Transformed ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’
https://www.awn.com/vfxworld/how-offloa ... -airbender

Panel Discussion: Visual Effects for Avatar: The Last Airbender

Wow. This is very generous...I know it took a lot of time to do this today.

I'm actually a ZBrush trainer for jewelry, and I helped a student just yesterday who's brand new with the program on the iPad, so perhaps it's good tech karma. I created some handouts for him with details of—of all things—masking in ZBrush.

I did grab a subscription of Mocha Pro...$48 a month is not bad for month-to-month while I hopefully finish this project this week, and I'm already (kind of) up and running on it. I found a tutorial that explained one of my biggest questions about going back and forth between Fusion and the Color tab.

I'm pretty good at researching and finding answers, but I have to say that Resolve has been a whole 'nother world of editing.

Thank you again!

Wow. This is very generous...I know it took a lot of time to do this today.

My pleasure. Love learning and teaching. Similar to yourself I would imagine.

I'm actually a ZBrush trainer for jewelry, and I helped a student just yesterday who's brand new with the program on the iPad, so perhaps it's good tech karma. I created some handouts for him with details of—of all things—masking in ZBrush. !

Very cool.

I needed to do some modeling of hard surface, frames for paintings and things like that. While I managed to model a simple frame in fusion its not a modeling or sculpting app, so I started searching for alternatives. Blender, Cinema 4D, ZBrush, 3DCoat etc. They all look very powerful and very temping , but as these things go, its hard to learn it overnight.

In the end I started slowly adding some skills in plasticity. I'm sure you are familiar with it. it is supposed to be CAD hard surfice modeling for artists, with minimal clutter to interface and some powerful modeling tools. Found some good little excersizes online for modeling an ashtray, or bottle etc for each little practice session. Liking it so far. And compliments fusion really where to polish it off.

ZBrush seems like its own beast to learn. I imagine its much like fusion or resolve, where no matter how much you think you know, every single day I learn something I didn't know the day before. Endless rabbit hole, but its never boring.

I did grab a subscription of Mocha Pro...$48 a month is not bad for month-to-month while I hopefully finish this project this week, and I'm already (kind of) up and running on it. I found a tutorial that explained one of my biggest questions about going back and forth between Fusion and the Color tab.

I'm pretty good at researching and finding answers, but I have to say that Resolve has been a whole 'nother world of editing.

Thank you again!

Yeah for VFX Mocha and SynthEyes. for 3D tracking I think are best investments, although technically you can do most of it in fusion they offer some nice tools to make it easier. Especially SynthEyes.

Lately I've been doing lot of roto and paint work, so Boris FX offers their Silhouette program which supposed to be the the Zbrush of paint and roto, but after some workarounds and building custom tools. I feel fusion can do it all and I don't have to pay $2K for silhouette. Pretty much all can be replicated in fusion.

Most of mocha stuff can also be replicated in fusion but Mocha is really good tool and worth it for working VFX person and so is SyntheEyes. Not convinced about Silhouette and surly not their Continuum and Sapphire which all exist in fusion so its crazy to me that they are selling Sapphire tools for almost 2K for perpetual license, when you can do it all natively. No idea who is actually buying it. its crazy to me.

About using masks from fusion in color page, yeah its a good way to transfer over mattes. Of course if you are working with fusion studio as standalone applicaiton you can still use various methods like VFX connect or export mattes as image sequance and use as external mattes in color page. Or the other way around since Magic Mask 2 at the moment is only in color page and fusion uses magic mask 1 for now, its also possible to leverage Magic Mask 2 in color page and use it for VFX in fusion page or fusion standalone if you export it as image sequance. I usually prefer EXR format in DWAA flavor. Small files that support pretty much everything EXR does with acceptable loss in quality do to compression, but at the gain of small file size. Which is ok for most tasks.

Cheers!