Removing ~200 pieces of dust from ~15 frames

Anyone have suggestions on how to remove about 200 specs of dust from about 15 frames of footage?

I've tried Fusion Paint cloning... grouping the ~200 Paint clone strokes then using the node's tracker to adjust the group across the footage... works great for initial frame but dust reappears in a frame or two given misalignment of tracked paint stroke group. The footage is fairly steady so I suspect the clone strokes are so tiny that tracking is not accurate enough to keep them fixed on the dust locations.

I also tried converting to dpx for use with dust removal as well as dust buster but neither seem like the right tool. I say this for removal/dpx because it seems frame by frame (no clip-handling with tracking), and for buster... well, just started and while really nice clone capabilities, it seems to work frame by frame (i.e., meaning redo everything for each frame... no clip-centric way of working as with roto or tracking/pain).

With dusty surface entirely a solid color, I tried some color correction hacks... somewhat effective... just not reaching the goal, not 100% as would be with clone removal.

Thanks,
Ashley

Any chance you can show us one or two of the frames. I wouldn't expect tracking to help with dust busting because traditionally, dust is different from one frame to the next, so I'm not sure what is you're trying to attempt.

I feel your pain. There is dedicated software for this but it’s is cost prohibitive if you’re not doing this kind of work on a regular basis. Fusion paint can be longer than one frame. I believe you need to change the stroke settings. You can research/Google the details on that. Try the dust OFX instead of the Dust Tool, if I recall correctly it functions slightly differently. Patch replacer could be of help depending on the camera movement. Tracking a larger area for the smaller patch to follow could be an option if the surface area lighting/changes allows for it. Additionally, if there’s enough contrast in the dust, a luma key/blur combination might get you there. Sending your file out to a company like Trace VFX for clean up could be an option (they give estimates if you give them sample frames and a frame count) if you could then charge the client/forward the costs. You could suggest Pushing this off to a Flame Artist as a suggestion to your clients is an option on higher end productions. It’s either the DPs “fault” or is a necessary evil that happens with ECU/Detailed table top shots.

Otherwise it’s a tedious manual process. Time frame s money. Is it billable? Can you “push back” on your clients for the extra time or stating its out of your scope of skills. I many times offer to attempt a solution with the caveat that if it doesn’t meet their needs (level of detail/invisibility) they need to be prepared to send it out to a compositor/VFX artist. There’s a reason why that is it’s own career path/craft.
Best of luck on finding a solution that suits your needs/budget.


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I didn't see that the dust is on a solid color. If it's a static shot, you might be able to get things done the quickest by just doing it manually. Just use a clone paint multistroke with a 1 frame off-set and depending on the size of the dust, you might be able to do this in about 2-3 hours, which might turn out to be quicker than finding technical workarounds that need manual clean-up after all.

I didn't see that the dust is on a solid color. If it's a static shot...

Unfortunately not a static shot... almost but enough motion and perspective that it is not really static... but thank you Sander de Regt for a very good suggestion.

Guess what? DaVinci Resolve Manual, Page 1495, "Using the Planar Tracker with the Paint Tool" works absolutely perfectly!

I did not even have to group strokes. The tutorial in the manual is nuanced... final result is achieved by making a copy PlanarTracker, placing after Merge node, choosing "Invert Steady Transform."

I have to say, I tried the many things, dust removal/buster, 3D camera tracker, etc., and the DR tutorial for "Using the Planar Tracker with the Paint Tool" is quite simple, elegant and amazingly effective... was pleasantly surprised. Took about 30 minutes considering I've probably repeated the cloning of these frames a 100 times already.