Panto Help

[Realimagesvideo]

I shot a video that has a slight problem—a dead pixel right in the middle of the screen. I think Aura could help me on this by taking and copying the pixel next to it. How could I do this automatically with Aura’s Panto. I am not much of a George script writer. Any help is appreciated.

William

[evar]

Hmm... what I would do in your case, make the pixel transparent, and put the same video under the one with the transparent pixel, but have the under video moved over 1 pixel. Essentially duplicating the pixel next to it.

The many different ways of making the pixel transparent:

1. in Aura, create a new layer on top of the video, with antialiasing off, with the Mechanical Pencil, pencil down a single pixel cover the dead pixel - expand the layer over the entire video, then click and drag the layer icon for the single pixel layer onto the icon for the video, then - change the Color option on the drop down menu to Erase. and you are left with the clear picture.

2. same as the above, cept export the top layer, and use it in your NLE as a matte / to create an alpha channel. And again putting the same clip under - moved over one pixel. This, to me, would be more efficient - as the dead pixel doesnt move, you could use the same matte for all of the video files, and the timeline setup would be really easy. (Im assuming its not just for one clip, but a series of.)

Post again if thats unappealing, or I need to explain more :)

-Evar

[SBowie]

This same query appeared on the VTNT list, where two members had an interesting "low-fuss" fast TEd method to offer. But just for completions sake, I'm going to add my Aura method using panto mode below:

____

Sure -- here's how to do that:

-- First, for convenience, zoom in a bit on your project, keeping the dead
pixel in view. (You'll have to preload the layer, which may make it easier
to use Scotts TEd method.)

-- Click on the "freehand line" button in the Main panel, and select the Pen
painting tool.

-- set the Pen tool to size 1 pixel, Power and Opacity 100%, and select
"Panto" painting mode.

- right-click on the freehand line button to bring up Shape Settings.

- set the Panto fields in that panel to something like -2, -2 or similar.

- click the mouse directly on top of your dead pixel in frame 0. It should
disappear.

- hit Undo.

- double-click on the layer in the timeline to select all frames.

- hit Enter on the keyboard, to repeat the operation on the entire sequence.

[evar]

Aha, thats even easier :)

[Scott Bates]

This same query appeared on the VTNT list, where two members had an interesting "low-fuss" fast TEd method to offer.
I was one of those, but upon further experimentation have concluded that the "low-fuss" TED method will only work in certain limited situations - a static shot with no camera movement and little or no movement of the content - i.e. only with something like a locked-down talking head type clip with very little movement.

The "low-fuss" theory involves duplicating the clip in Ted, putting it under the original clip, turning on overlay on the duplicate and using the Positioner to crop and pan to a 2x2 area that's slightly offset from the dead pixel and then moving it over the dead pixel on the original clip.

The problem comes in when there's camera or content movement with changes in color and particularly luminosity - if a dark 2x2 spot is selected to block a white dead pixel, that's fine as long as the pixel is within similarly dark material, but as soon as the camera pans or the content moves so that area the dead pixel is in is lighter, you've in effect created a dark dead pixel spot instead of a light one.

Hope that makes sense, but at any rate I've come to the conclusion that Steve's Aura panto suggestion is really the only way to solve the problem since it will continuously pick up whatever color/luminosity is beside the dead pixel in each frame and field. Just wish Aura was faster.
:(

[Realimagesvideo]

Can Panto be used as a George script. I would be nice to paint all the frame automatically.

[SBowie]

Yeah, I think it could be done, presuming the script writer had the co-ords of the dead pixel.

You would still need to load each clip one at a time, unfortunately, because there's no way to use George to mutli-select a series or folder full of files. The only way around it would be too use Batch Factory, from Jeff White, which would let you pre-load 20 files at a time - might be a killer RAM-wise, though.