Cleaning up Surveillance Footage

This doesn't necessarily have to be about Photoshop, but any program (although I've heard CS5 Photoshop referred to as "demon magic"). I have some grainy, blurry surveillance footage that I was hoping to get some information from (license plate). I don't expect the process to be simple, but I was hoping for a way to clean up the footage in order to make this license plate out.
I have the video and can take frames from it. I also have a high resolution super clear still image taken from a digital camera (taken at a later time) placed exactly where the video surveillance camera was so that I could compare to two. I was hoping I could tell the grainy image from the surveillance footage to match and change it's pixels to that of the clean image. This would then adjust everything equally and the license plate would become clear. This of course sounds good in theory, but I don't know if a program is out there to actually do this, if Photoshop can, or if there is another way?
Thanks!

You could try this plu in http://www.focusmagic.com/
I must emphasise I have not used this software but the website claims to achieve what you are trying to do.
Dave

Similar Messages

How can I clean up old footage in FCPX?

How can I clean up old footage in FCPX? I have some older 4x3 TV analog video that has some pretty noticeable noise and fuzz in the image. Anyone know how I can clean them up a bit? Thanks!

FCP X doesn't ship with a noise reduction filter. You can experiment with selective blur effects and sharpening, but I would not be very optimistic about the results.
There are a number of plug-ins available. One that I think works well is Neat Denoiser. They have a trial version (with watermarked output) that you could download to see whether it will do what you want.
Good luck.
Russ

Converting 8mm Reels to DVD; Cleaning Up The Footage...

You guys have been terrific helping me so far so hopefully you can help me with this issue too!
Im going to be converting some old family 8mm reels to DVD by projecting the movies onto a white wall and recording the footage with a video camera. The process looks really good all considered, but I was wandering what the best way was to clean up the color of the footage. Im still new to CS3 so Im willing to bet its an option that is right in front of me but if anyone can help me or recommend a plug-in etc that would help me out I would greatly appreciate it!

I normally start with Levels, then add Highlight & Shadow (turn the auto OFF and do that manually), and the either the Fast Color Corrector, or for more difficult footage the Three-way Color Corrector. Pretty much as Rod suggests.
Good luck,
Hunt

GoPro 120 fps footage lags in premier pro help!

So I've filmed action sports mostly in 720p at 120 fps but when I import those files into premier pro it becomes extremely laggy (anything 60fps and under works fine), I have been forced use the go pro studio app to import and convert the video files into a useable format, but in the process it drops the frame rate 60fps and in turn I cannot achieve the same level of slow mo I could with 120 fps. Please help I don't know what to do, but I inevitably want awesome clean slow mo footage!
Regards,
Elliott

Thanks, but is it possible to use it directly through premier without converting it through go pro?

Slightly Grainy Footage

I have a Panasonic AG-HMC150P Camera, it works great and I love the fact that I only need to use a card to download the footage and no tape!
I have and I am using Premiere Pro CS5.5. When I upload the digital footage to Premiere it is blue in color (which I easily correct) and it is slightly grainy.
Its not a horrible piece of footage, but its not the clean and clear footage I originally shot. I even used some of the Video FX to help clean this up, and it helps
a tiny bit.
How can I get the same quality footage I shoot with onto my Premiere Pro system, without having to use all of the effects?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Yes, some stills of your original footage would be best. After its encoded for YouTube or wherever, it's impossible to tell where the problem lies. Seeing a still of the footage played back externally in some desktop player would be good, along with how it looks like Pr. There are too many variables to use any one preview as the benchmark, so we need to compare and see where the problem is being introduced.
To me, it looks like the gain switch was flipped on in the camera; at that point, the noise is cooked into the footage, and the only way to try to mitigate it is to use a noise/grain removal effect.

How to make "Time of Day" show on my finished project

I am a private investigator. I shoot surveillance footage using a Canon XH A1 HD Camcorder. I am currently using Adobe Premier Pro and hate it. I need to have the time and date show in the finished project I provide to my clients. The information is on the mini dv tape but doesn't show in my project unless I capture through a Canopus break out box and use analog (RCA) capture cables. When I capture via this method, the project is 4:3 and low quality, not HD. I would like to just capture via firewire as this would give me a higher quality project and a wide screen image.
I have a MacBook Pro and would make the change to a full Mac Pro and FC or FCE system if I could just get what to me should be a simple thing to actually happen! I could even use iMovie for all of the editing we do is super simple. Can anyone steer me in the right direction. Thanks.

I do understand your intention, but the "unaltered" image is actually the clean one ie with no time/date stamp displayed ... the display of the embedded time/date stamp data is simply a function of the camera/player and not an intrinsic part of the picture itself. as long as the data you you overlaid manually was accurate then strictly speaking it should be no more or less satisfactory
Suppose for example, that I could point you to a free plugin that can read and display the embedded data code ... applying it to your video would alter the picture no more an no less than if you had manually applied text generators that displayed that same information ... the filter would just be automating the tedious manual process

Corrupt render files

Can corrupt render files cause artifacts like small square white blocking?

Yep, seeing it on footage that has been rendered on the edit suites I was working in at uni. Capture Scratch footage(raw captured footage)seems fine. Artifacts appear on canvas and external monitor. Monitoring via firerwire 400 port through mini dv deck on ext monitor. Working from an external firewire drive on a lacie pci firewire 800 port. Uni runs fcp 4.5 with OSX 10.4.2.
Brought drive home to work on my system with fcp 5 artifacts still appearred until I reconnected them to the captured files and did a re-render. The artifacts have dissappeared, i think. I have saved a copy of the original to work with fcp 5 so i still have the original to work with at uni on fcp 4.5. I need to be able to work at uni as well as home.
Do you think this problem stems from corrupt render files? To begin with I thought it might have been a tape problem but tapes play back clean, the clean captured raw footage seems to back this up.
cheers for help

Removing shake in after effects

After deciding to take the jump to CC I discovered all that looks good has its own set of problems. I'm hoping in this discussion a skilled AE user might save me time and money. I'm a proficient Vegas Pro user. The jump from a mix of Adobe programs and apps from other vendors has left me floundering somewhat in needing to get up to speed on some Adobe products.
My ask for help here is that I've used Mercalli to clean up shaky footage (such as taken in a moving 4WD on a rough track) with great success but now that I'm moving to 100% Adobe products, I'd like to hear from users of AE who have a prefered workflow when handling work like this. I'd greatly apreciate some help here.
Sure... I could read up or school up on the topic, even buy a product I've used in the past that has an Adobe version but I'm hoping as working professionals who have done this themselves or know more than me about removing shake with after effects, suggesting their worklow might avoid the very expensive and time consuming tasks of trial and error that gets suggested so often. RTFM is not going to help me either.
My belief is that having signed up for the full house of Adobe CC, I should be using it instead of dealing wiht the update and upgrade mess I'll eventually face if I don't get on the program. Hopefull this makes sense and someone will help?
Ryadia.

I'd like to thank all who replied to my question. After a few days of experimentation I've found that Warp Stabilizer can certainly be used for correcting many hand help situations but like many components provided by Adobe in their graphic software, it has limitations that third party products do a much better job at.
Warp Stabilizer is certainly able to level out the effects of a hand held camera phone or pocket camera but to a videographer needing to produce broadcast quality promos, the fact that it works but nowhere near as well as a specialist product developed for the specific purpose is quite clear to me after using some of the information provided in replies.
I may be biased after using Mercalli for most of my stabalisation needs but installing their trial and working the same footage with firstly Warp and then Mercalli, I have decided this will remain my prefered stabaliser. I am still not entirely comfortable with AE after several years of Vegas but the learning curve for AE is not as bad as I'd expected. I'm sure I'll become familiar with it in a short time.
The comment regarding the need for a stable component when shooting a vast areas of water is overcome quite easiely if you include some of the mast spreaders in the corner of the frame or as in a 4WD mounted camera, a small part of the vehicle the camera is attached to will provide the constant needed. It does take a little practice to avoid over Stabilization but isn't that so with everything?.
Thanks all, I apreciate your help
Ryadia

For the millions trying to use iMovie HD with Yosemite

A good discussion got started in iDVD about using iMovie HD (a.k.a. iMovie 06) with Yosemite.
I am attempting to relocate some of that information into the iMovie forum.
From jboolean:
Find iMovie HD.app, control click on it and View Package Contents. Open Contents/MacOS/iMovie HD. That seems to bypass the check.
From: hughmass:   ( says it works ! )
I can confirm that if one right clicks all the way through, and doesn't close the terminal window, iMovie HD works as usual. I put a mp4 into it, put transitions and music, and exported.   Nice discovery as there are a lot of folks who still would rather use this application from 2006. You know, so long ago.
Hugh
From Old Toad:
I tried that fix and it will open but won't work further than that. That method also opens the Terminal app which lists all of the bypasses and commands iMovie is skipping. If you close the Terminal window iMovie closes. The project file it creates is not a package as it normally is but just a folder.   It freezes up when you try to edit an audio clip. Then when closed it won't open the project again.
I suspect that there is some, “minor item” that is causing the iMovie HD problem with Yosemite.   Hopefully, some programming "super genius" will find a way to lead the rest of us out of darkness.

Karsten,   One of the things I really like about you is that even when others disagree with you about “best methods” you always have sympathetic answers and great explanations. Your technical expertise, and good humor is appreciated by me.
Quicktime will get obsolete. Now with Yosemite, the new kid in town is AVFoundation
I'm all for these improvements. I would be delighted, ecstatic, overjoyed, to change to a new movie editor if it was half as good as iMovie HD. As you know, the new iMovie can't even set chapters!     I use chapters with Podcasts and DVDs.   I also have Final Cut Pro X.   It can set chapters but it's got way more horsepower than I need.
When I first started using iMovie 12 years ago I never read the manual. Didn't need to. Starting with iMovie 08, I spent hours reading manuals and watching YouTube videos trying to figure out simple tasks. Sometimes I think I have a mental block because I started my video editing with real film using a razor blade and tape!
Nobody forces you, to install Yosemite nor to buy a new Mac
Eventually, you are forced to upgrade.   Let me give you an example. For a number of years I was using a very high-end analog to digital converter from Grass Valley. This device came with a terrific piece of software that would “clean up” old footage. I could do lightning and darkening, adjust colors, and filter out “Hiss”.   Well, that software was written for the old IBM processors, the company never updated it. So I was stuck using Snow Leopard (last OS to contain Rosetta) for a long time.
As time went on, I would purchase new software that would NOT work with Snow Leopard, so I was forced to switch to Mavericks.
However, you are correct in one regard; if you have a computer that is running the software and hardware that you like and you can dedicate that computer to that one task, yes, you can continue on, more or less indefinitely until your hardware breaks. I know people who are doing exactly that so they can keep using iMovie HD.
pretty nonsense to keep PROJECT-files
I don't keep my project files either.   I do my editing with iMovie HD, then I use iDVD to create a DVD image file (about 4 GB). That is the only item I keep.
My mind boggles at the multitude of video file formats available. But I know this, 20 years from now I will still be able to play a DVD or at least view the DVD image file.

Corrupt Oracle9IDS Files

Trying to download Oracle9iDS from the following page:
http://technet.oracle.com/software/products/ids/htdocs/winsoft.html
But after downloaded all files and following the directions, double clicking on the exe file opens up winzip which said that is it not a valid zip file. In addition, the file size of the file1, file2 and file4 are not 100MB. We are using Windows XP and IE to download.

Yep, seeing it on footage that has been rendered on the edit suites I was working in at uni. Capture Scratch footage(raw captured footage)seems fine. Artifacts appear on canvas and external monitor. Monitoring via firerwire 400 port through mini dv deck on ext monitor. Working from an external firewire drive on a lacie pci firewire 800 port. Uni runs fcp 4.5 with OSX 10.4.2.
Brought drive home to work on my system with fcp 5 artifacts still appearred until I reconnected them to the captured files and did a re-render. The artifacts have dissappeared, i think. I have saved a copy of the original to work with fcp 5 so i still have the original to work with at uni on fcp 4.5. I need to be able to work at uni as well as home.
Do you think this problem stems from corrupt render files? To begin with I thought it might have been a tape problem but tapes play back clean, the clean captured raw footage seems to back this up.
cheers for help

Lip-Synced Music Videos for YouTube?

I have been creating music for 20 years (home studio), and would like to create videos for some of my original songs (currently on mp3 or wav files), then upload to YouTube. I know virtually nothing about video or video editing. I was wondering if Premiere Elements would be a good editing application for my purposes. For each video, someone would film multiple video takes of me lip-syncing to a pre-recorded song. Is Premiere Elements sophisticated or precise enough to allow excellent synchronization between separate video clips and an audio track for lip-syncing purposes? Would you recommend something else (for PC)? Thanks.
Greg

Greg,
The ONLY advantage to PrPro in your stated need, is to do the Audio editing in Audio Units, but then as you are working in Audio already, you probably have a favorite DAW, and that will give you even more control. That is NOT to say that PrPro does not have other pluses, but just not that would likely apply here. Hey, one's gotta' get something for the extra $600, right?
I'd get the trial of PrE 9.0, and test with it. There are a few limitations on certain formats, but it's pretty full-featured for a trial. Just know that it will place a watermark on the Exported/Shared footage, so you cannot deliver/upload that, and get clean, watermark-free footage.
Unless I missed something (I do most of my editing in PrPro, so do not put my PrE through all of its paces), the operations will be almost identical.
For syncing, just remember to work in Timeline View Mode (only way to work in PrPro), and turn Snap OFF (the S key togglesn Snap), otherwise, you will be trying to force little increments, and the Audio will jump about, and Snap onto cuts, etc. Just toggle it back on, when you go back to the Video editing, as it makes general alignment much easier.
If one is doing any Speed change, PrPro might be a bit easier, and offer more control, but not THAT much.
Now, if you do not have a DAW, that you love, then you might consider the CS5.5 Production Premium suite, with Audition included. One can easily do some pretty heavy-duty Audio work in that program. My workflow would be to edit the Video, and then Import the Audio and the Video into Audition, where I would tweak the Audio to perfectly (within that 1 Frame for Video), while watching the Video. Audition will offer the ability to work with Envelopes for the Audio, and adjust the Speed almost infinitely, while maintaining Pitch. However, that is not a cheap suite, and there will be a bit of a learning curve, if one has not used Audition, or a similar DAW before.
Good luck, and let us know how the PrE trial works out.
Hunt

Mpeg2 issues new thread

woodwizer,
the mov export is here ( final test export )
http://rodneybauer.com/whiteboard3.htm
right click and use 'save link as" option...and you can save the file
the web upload ( youtube which is not so great quality wise...but thats youtube ) is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGm1VEG8zxs
-------------using other web site related video ( not youtube ) delivery will give better results...and you can adjust bitrate on export too...make it nicer...I only used 2300kbps----------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGm1VEG8zxs
as you can see , different things happen on web delivery than other formats...and the uploaded file I used is the one you see on the above link...the letterbox format inside the 720x576 4:5 space...
this didnt require any re-capturing of tapes and so on...just exporting mov wrapper as progressive etc as explained in my confusing earlier posts...and avoids the problems with dv avi or avi exports and so on...because of the hd anamorphic 1.333 original source...
subsequently, you can convert all footage from HD to the mov wrapper and then edit, and then export your edit, and then upload to web and then have a pretty decent product, I think....
If you go interleaved with dv pal recapture in sd my opinion is that you will lose half your vertical resolution going to progressive when you go to the web....you can see the "web" handles it differently maybe from the above link to youtube... ?

I will start with the camera
Its a Canon A1 which can shoot in progressive but puts the footage as interlaced on tape.
1440x1080 with non square pixels and a PAR of 1.33, also known as anamophic widescreen.
As Woodwice has an underpowered laptop there is no way he can edit 8 tapes of hdv with several houndereds of clips in CS4.
CS4 cannot handle large projects. Or he has to make every tape into a project.
He did mention he was able to edit SD without any problem.
So problem solved. Convert the already captured footage or recapture as SD with the camera.
Downconverting in the camera will often give a better result than most software converters.
Using a converter like Aunsoft wont do the job because its for AVCHD (tapeless stuff) which has the extention of MTS/m2ts and is quite
different from HDV footage which Woodwice captured with HDV split and gave him m2t. Premiere gives .mpeg but no scene detection.
Using AME to get HDV to SD in CS4 will give you small vertikal lines this is because they (Adobe) changed the PAR. So CS4 handles convertion
somewhat different than CS3. The second converted avi which plays wonky is imo probably corrupted by K-lite codec pack).
All of John's suggestions but one are unusable.
Corel is a NLE
Womble is an mpeg editor
Magix is a NLE
NCH will convert to dv avi but not from m2t
Daniussoft is a dvd ripper
Deskhare will only convert SD.
Topshoftware dvd only
DVD decrypter dvd only
Squared 5: finally one that can do m2t to dv avi.
Super can do it probably too, but gives you all sorts of codecs you do not want.
Finally mpeg virtual dub. You will not find this on the regular site.
Its specially made, you have to Google, and it does not handle m2t (changing extention makes it crash).
IMO TMPGenc 4 Express is a good converter but not cheap.
Proxy editing is out of the question if one has to render and export on the same underpowered rig.
MPEG Pro HD 4 Plug-In could work but is expensive. 160 dollars.
Have my doubts about Cineform on this rig.
PAL or ntsc dv avi can never be progressive.
the only dv avi that can be progressieve is 24p.
DV avi can never have square pixels.
A dv avi pal is always lower field, non square pixel either 4:3 or widescreen and 720x576.
CS3 has a different par for the dv avi then cs4/5 does.
If you want square pixels in a pal widescreen sequence you will have to use a different codec or uncompressed and change the dimensions for cs3 its 1024x576 for cs4/5 its 1050x576.
In my opinion mov is for the Mac. avi is for PC.
Now for choosing a sequence setting.
HDV: 1440x1080, pal is 25 fps and widescreen 1.33 non square
CS4/5 has ready made presets for this type of footage (and so has cs3 i believe). There is no need to go and make one yourself, especially if you do not know what you are doing. If the footage does not play well its usually the HW.
As the A1 puts its footage interlaced (two fields) on tape there is no need to choose 25p. An interlaced sequence will work just a well. No harm in using a progressive timeline.
Converting HDV to SD (dv avi) can be done in AME (not Premiere, AME is a seperate programm now, you can fill it with footage and batch convert) but it will give you the narrow black bars on each side (see my screendump somewhere in the thread, post 26) This is not an 'issue' in CS3 because it still has the old PAR settings. In CS4 you can crop the footage in the export settings but that will take even longer to convert.
If you capture the HDV footage as SD in the camera you will have no issue with the black bars. One gets clean SD widescreen footage.
Post 52: these are invalid settings will never work for dv avi.
Now when the whole project is edited in a SD widescreen pal lower field first project.
One can export to dvd or the web.
The export to dvd stays interlaced. For the web one can choose e.g. wmv or mp4 both will need deinterlacing on export.
Hope this helps.
PS never going to write a long post as this again

Compression Rate = Quality... Rule of Thmb?

Are there any rules of thumb for compression rates and resulting quality? For instance, I've heard 5Mbps is the bottom end for "as good as commercial movie DVDs". I guess measures that describe "quality" are subjective or varied... but terms that are significant to me are things like "Movie DVD's" "Betacam" "VHS" "no perceptable loss, even in motion scenes".
I often need to decide if a client will need one or two disks, based on the proposed amount of footage, before production. I make a rough bit-budget ahead of time. So, if the bit-budget calls for a 4.2 bit rate and that is too ugly for what I think my client needs, then I'll need to go to 2 disks. So, knowing in advance the bit rate -to- quality relationship would be very helpful.
Let's say the constants are:
Decent DV footage, let's say "average" screen action
Edited on FCP
Compressed with Compressor-2, Constant Bit Rate, to Mpeg-2
Thanks, Ralph
Desktop G4 / 1.5 G / Mac OS X (10.3.6)
Desktop G4 / 1.5 G / Mac OS X (10.3.6)

Not really. A lot comes down to what you see on screen when you try a few test encodes. Higher data rates don't always equate to higher quality - particularly at the upper end of the scale... can you see a difference between 8MBPS and 9.4MBPS, for example?
The fact is that it is only through experience that you get to know what tends to look good for the material you have got... therefore encode lots of things and see how it turns out!
Quite often the client will demand a single disc set, for example. Your experience will tell you that their 4 hour sport video won't look very good and so you have to have that conversation with them. No matter how good the source footage is, when you reduce the bitrate too far to get a file that fits the disc they want the quality will suffer - but you can turn to MPEG1, half D1, etc to help get them to replication, of course.
In general, the middle of the bit rate scale will be a good enough place to start. If you have really clean source footage then a software encoder like Compressor might do the job alright, but a better encoder, such as BitVice, MegaPEG.X, Canopus Procoder will do a better job with the same bit rates. A hardware encoder like the sonic SD2000 might give a different result again, whilst Cinemacraft could be set up to run a multi-pass VBR encode over a period of several days and squeeze every last drop of quality out of the footage.
There are simply too many variables involved, and I'd be sceptical of a 'one size fits all' approach, I'm afraid.
5MBPS for 'as good as commercial DVDs' is nonsense in this context. 5MBPS on really clean betacam source footage run through an SD2000 is a dream compared to 5MBPS on noisy, poorly lit mini-DV put through Compressor... it's unwise to make generalisations, IMO.

Transcode and downres 4K to 1080

Some questions here about working with 4K. I almost feel I should know the answers myself but I’ve not yet found clear guidance – any input gratefully received.
I work entirely in 1080 timelines, on FCP7.
Increasingly, there’s footage available now in 2.7 and 4K, from cameras like the GoPro4, and I’ve been making various test shoots.
My workflow has been to transcode the GoPro h264 to ProRes, and at the same time downres to 1080.
Here’s where the problem arises. After the transcode/downres, what looked like very clean and crisp footage in its native form has developed an unnacceptable amount of noise.
I’ve tried the conversion via both Compressor and Streamclip, and the effect is just the same.
Is this something to do with ‘squeezing’ 4K of data down into a smaller frame – or is there some other mistake I’m making?
My other question is to do with getting the best out of the 4K – even putting this transcode issue to one side.
I can really see the potential of cropping into the 4K frame and resizing – but how do I do that given that I’m working in a 1080 environment – therefore the 4K material is going to render down in any case. Is this an issue with still working in FCP7, that FCPX is supposed to get over?
FCP7 7.0.3 MacPro 10.9.5 2x2.66 /6core/ 12G RAM Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme2

I use the 2.7k material from a GoPro all the time edited into 720p forms and don't see deterioration - other than there are simply fewer pixels to describe the scene.
My work flow is to copy the files off the card to a folder on my edit hard drive, open GoPro Studio, bring in the material, apply the ProTune preset (I usually shoot raw) then export as ProRes.
Once in FCP, make sure you have turned off "automatically resize to fit current settings". If you haven't done this, you can still open up the clip that has been resized and, in the Motion Tab of the viewer, change the scale back to 100%. This will allow you to move the image around and use whatever portion you choose.
Best,
x

PPro CS6 Slow motion is jittery is there a fix

Hi
When i slow down a clip it jitters and is not smooth. Is there a fix for this? I'm certain that this shouldn't happen.
Thanks.

premiere has no real slow motion effect built into it. premiere does one of two things, it will repeat a frame or blend the two frames to fake a new original one. frame blend looks like ghosting, it may have worked on old tube tv's, but on todays lcd's its very noticeable. the same can be said of the repeat frame, on modern tv/lcds it will be noticed, which is the stutter/jitter you may be seeing.
so this depends on what the true frame rate of the archive footage is and it also depends on how much you are trying to slow down the footage, telling premiere to make up new fake frames. the file you have may report as 25, but very old camera's actually shot lower fps and the footage might have been thrown in a 25p project to be put on youtube etc. if the true fps of the archive footage is lower, you will notice the stutter/jitter even more.
as Ann says you can try After Effects, it does have some slow motion effects that do try to recreate a new frame not just repeat or blend frames. however this has its faults too, and creates artifacts around the areas of motion. this can be just as annoying and distracting. there are tutorials on youtube etc, that show ways to try and hide the artifacts to clean up the footage. there are also third party plugins, i believe Twixtor Pro is the most popular but also expensive.

Cleaning up Surveillance Footage

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