Blackmagic Cintel Scanner User Manual  Dust Buster

This plugin is also designed to eliminate dust, dirt, and other imperfections and artifacts from clips, but it does so only with user guidance, for clips where the Automatic Dirt Removal plugin yields unsatisfactory results. This guidance consists of moving through the clip frame-by-frame and drawing boxes around imperfections you want to eliminate. Once you’ve drawn a box, the offending imperfection is auto-magically eliminated in the most seamless way possible. This works well for dirt and dust, but it also works for really big stains and blotches, as seen below.

(Top) Drawing a box around dirt in the original image, (Botom) Result in the Dust Buster plugin

In many respects, the Dust Buster is similar to the Dead Pixel Fixer, however the Dust Buster effect is designed to repair transient bits of dust and dirt that only last for a frame or two, whereas the Dead Pixel Fixer is designed to work on blemishes that are fixed in place for the duration of a clip.

General

These top level controls let you choose how to draw patches with which to repair temporally unstable dust and dirt in the frame, whether or not to show their on-screen controls, and how.

• Navigation Controls: Four buttons let you jump to frames on which you’ve drawn patches. There are four buttons:

  • First Modified Frame: Jumps the playhead to the first frame of that clip with a patch.

  • Previous Modified Frame: Jumps the playhead to the previous frame with a patch.

  • Next Modified Frame: Jumps the playhead to the next frame forward with a patch.

  • Last Modified Frame: Jumps the playhead forward to the last frame with a patch.

• Patch Style: There are three different kinds of patches you can draw to deal with different kinds of blemishes in the frame.

  • Draw Rect: Click and drag to place a rectangular patch of any size from one corner to the opposite corner. Once drawn, you can click on any edge of the overlay and drag to reposition it.

  • Draw Ellipse: Click and drag to place an elliptical patch of any size from one corner to the opposite corner. Once drawn, you can click on any edge of the overlay and drag to reposition it.

  • Place Patch: Lets you place small patches specifically for tiny details such as dead pixels. When you choose this option, a ‘new patch size’ slider appears that lets you adjust the size of the patches you’re about to place prior to placing them. Once drawn, you can click on the edge of any patch and drag to reposition it.

• New Patch Size: (only when place patch is selected) Lets you choose how large of a patch to place using the Place Patch tool.

• Show Patches: This checkbox lets you show or hide the onscreen outline of every patch in the Viewer.

• Hide During Interaction : Hides the onscreen outline of every patch in the viewer while you’re moving a patch; this makes it easier to see the effect of moving the patch on the image, without the outline getting in the way.

Patch Type

There are six methods you can use to attempt to fix the contents of a selected patch. When drawing new patches, the currently selected patch type will determine what the next patch will be. When you’ve selected an existing patch, changing the patch type will change how that patch works.

• Auto: The default method. Once you’ve drawn a bounding box, the two frames prior to and the two frames after the current clip will be analyzed and compared to the current image. The best of these five frames will be sampled to remove the imperfection in the current frame. Images two frames away are prioritized since that will avoid the appearance of frozen grain, but only if they’re a suitable match to the content of the current frame.

• +/- 1 Frame: In this mode, if you draw a bounding box from left to right, the next frame will be drawn upon to remove the imperfection. If you draw a bounding box from right to left, the previous frame will be used.

• +/- 2 Frames: If you draw a bounding box from left to right, the image two frames forward will be drawn upon to remove the imperfection. If you draw a bounding box from right to left, the image two frames back will be used.

• Spatial: Automatically fills the interior of the selected patch with pixels drawn from the surroundings of the patch, using the fill method. This works well for small blemishes, but for large blemishes a pattern might be discernible, which gives away the effect.

• Clone: Clone mode copies part of the image to fill a shape or patch placed over the thing you want to remove. In this mode, clicking and dragging to place a rect or ellipse over an imperfection is followed by a second click to place the sample region you want to clone. Clicking once to place a patch will be followed by a second click to place the sample region. Selecting an existing shape or patch and choosing ‘clone’ lets you click on the shape to position the clone region. The sample region is indicated by a dotted shape that’s connected to the original shape.

• Blend Clone: Operates similarly to clone mode, except the copied part of the image that fills the rect, ellipse, or patch is blended with the image to integrate it more softly.

• Fill Method: When using the spatial patch type, the fill method determines how the blemish in the image is repaired.

  • Grid: Samples the pixels surrounding the rect, ellipse, or patch, and blurs them inward both horizontally and vertically. Extremely effective for tiny blemishes. For larger blemishes, a grid-like pattern may emerge.

  • Horizontal: Samples the pixels to the left and right of the rect, ellipse, or patch, and blurs them inward.

  • Vertical: Samples the pixels to the top and bottom of the rect, ellipse, or patch, and blurs them inward.

  • Patchy: Samples pixels from all around the rect, ellipse, or patch, and expands and blurs them together to create a soft, non-uniform region with which to repair the blemish. Doesn’t have the patterning of the grid methods of fill, but produces an extremely smooth result.

  • Smooth: Simply uses a gaussian blur to repair the blemish.

Patch Options

These options let you customize the effect of a patch filling over a blemish.

• Mute: Lets you turn a particular patch on or off via keyframing. Useful for blemishes that only show up for a few pixels of a shot.

• Variability: (Spatial patches only) Raising this parameter lets you make the fill method less uniform.

• Soft Edges: Lets you soften the edges of the patch.

• Size Adjust: Lets you change the size of a patch after its creation.

Advanced Controls

These controls let you customize the UI of this effect.

• Clone Sticks to Mouse: When enabled, drawing or placing a rect, ellipse, or patch in clone or blend clone mode immediately switches to positioning the sample region, making it faster to use.

• New Patches Stay Selected: When enabled, patches stay selected after you draw them, in preparation for further customization.

• UI Line Thickness: Lets you choose how thick the on-screen outlines should be.

• Output Mode: This lets you see different representations of the patched effect you’re creating. There are four options.

  • Patched Result: The final result, with each patch repairing the blemish it’s covering.

  • Patch Locations: Shows a key where each placed patch is white against black.

  • Differences: Shows the difference of each patch against the original image.

  • Difference Magnitude: Shows a more pronounced differences representation.