Correcting Frame by Frame?

Hi everyone,

I am new to DaVinci Resolve and am using version 12.5, so please bear with me as I try to navigate the software!

I have to edit some footage that unfortunately has many redox blemishes throughout (attached is an example). I have been looking into how to remove blemishes in DaVinci Resolve, and it seems easy enough, but all the tutorials I have seen cover tracking a blemish.

I am more interested in how to edit frame by frame since the blemishes change position on each frame. Can anybody tell me if and how it is possible to correct frame by frame, or link me to some resources? I know it will be a process but I still need to figure it out.

Much appreciated!

See the section on KEYFRAMES in the manual, Chapter 113 "Keyframing in the Color Page," pp. 2171-2185. This is important stuff (and I wish it was presented a lot earlier in the manual).

I will probably try to that in the fusion tab with paint: the default left of the multistroke clone is 1 frame. You can either fix it there, or generate mattes for the color page.

Without guarantee: You can always try OFX automatic Dirt Removal. Test different settings to remove the most blemishes while keeping the most detail. I admit that there: it will be difficult with what I see.

Have you tried the Dust Removal tool?

Dust Removal.jpg (13.04 KiB) Viewed 5303 times

If they are in random places in every frame then a temporal median like algorithm will remove them automatically. Right Click on the Dust Removal tool for settings.

Have you tried the Dust Removal tool?

Miltos,

This option makes it difficult to go back. This option is old.

With the OFX (which does the same thing but not so well): no difficulty to cancel and start again with a new setting.

If you're trying to remove DIRT (and I didn't see "dirt" in the original message), I would say use the Dust-Busting and Automatic Dirt Removal OFX plug-ins and see how that goes. Restoring old film takes a lot of time, patience, and experience. Resolve is not the best or most complex tool out there for this, but it can work to a point (and is very affordable).

For a kinescope like the one pictured, you may also want to try to use the De-Flicker tool and see how well that works, or if it's appropriate to what you're deal with.

I've never used the dust buster option in Resolve, so I can't speak to it., but I would suggest you treat this like a vfx shot...or several vfx shots.

Output it as individual dpx sequences. (1 sequence per shot)
take it into fusion
create a clean plate on a frame with the widest coverage using the paint tool. Either freeze frame this fixed frame, or export it as a tif, and reload it as a new source.

Track the shot in question and roto in the clean plate where possible.
On the peoples faces you will need to try a bit more paint work,, possible using the clone tool, and offsetting to a previous frame, but the clean plate and roto should get you through the set pieces fairly quickly. If this is shot with an old studio camera (which it looks like) im guessing there isn't even that much camera movement?

I'd try something like this first (in some comp software):
- key the splotches (they are colored so either some color key or saturation key etc should work) and expand and blur the edges so that mask covers discolored area and blends into surrounding pixels.
- run a temporal median over the clip and replace splotches with result. This should reasonably fill most of splotches that are in static or slowly moving areas.
- manually fix places where previous didn't work out with cloning.

You could also try optical flow based stabilization/matchmoving but on footage with so low resolution and quality it might fail. Stabilize, do temporal median, reapply motion, merge over original using splotch mask.

Also, run a denoiser over footage at first and reapply the same noise in the end, it will make paint work much more invisible. If you don't have the tools for regenerating noise based on noise profile, fill splotch areas with noise from previous/next frame, with offset, from sequence of cleaned noise etc. This is necessary because reapplying noise from original image might introduce some of the splotches back if denoiser mistakes them partially as noise.

Thank you everyone for your input!

I actually found a simple way to reduce the blemishes:

Under the Color tab I worked in the RGB mixer and selected "monochrome", then played with the levels until the spots nearly faded away. This way I didn't have to work frame by frame after all! Just thought I'd mention in case someone else finds this useful.

P.S. Thankfully this footage was black and white, I'm sure that made things a lot easier.