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In the post-production suite, clients continue to ask editors to work miracles on their less than stellar video footage. Here are a few cures for some common ills.
Blemishes Be Gone
People want to look their best on camera. Usually they?d like a little smoothing out of facial features and hiding some minor imperfections. I turn to the Sony Vegas third-party Pixelan CreativEase BlurPro plug-in which includes some great preset effects ready for tweaking. The CE effects also work with other NLEs.
The tricky nature of pulling this off successfully is to add blur where needed but retain the detail in obvious places. Pixelan CE BlurPro has an ingenious Blarpen style (Blur-Sharpen) which works quite nicely on most subjects.
Navigate to the Vegas Video FX tab and locate the Pixelan CE BlurPro plug-in in the left pane. In the right pane, scroll down until you find the Remove Blemishes 3 Preset. Click this and drag and drop it on the Timeline video event on which you will work.
The dialog box contains several adjustments, but this tutorial focuses on the Main tab. Type includes several blurs and an Amount slider for adjustment. Style is where the all-important Blarpen (and several other choices) resides along with its Amount slider. Source let?s you mix the original material with the BlurPro effect for the best results. All of these parameters are keyframeable, but for this purpose, one global setting usually suffices.
Change the Style Blarpen Amount slider to around 50 and adjust the Source slider to around 40. These are the primary parameters to tweak for just the right look. Your results will vary based on your particular material.
The Pixelan CreativEase plug-ins do not have a bypass. You?ll also notice that when you first choose it, the plug-in has its own interface and doesn?t keep the Video Event FX window open either. Navigate to the Prefs tab and uncheck the Hide Video Event FX window and click the set button. Now you?ll see the Pixelan CE BlurPro and the Video Event FX dialog where you can toggle bypass and enable.
When you get the look you want, click the Apply Current Settings (green checkmark) to close the dialog box. The Event Video FX dialog remains on display. Here you can reopen the Pixelan plug-in, bypass/enable the effect, and add additional Video FX to the chain. If satisfied, simply close the dialog box.
Here are the before and after pictures of the blemish fix.
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| Before |
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| After |
Now if only Pixelan made a plug-in that can remove ten pounds off a subject, I?d be all set in my client?s eyes.
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