Hasta La Motion!

I process raw photography and video for a company that does aerial survey for large infrastructure like utilities, highways, etc…

For video we moved from a static DV camera to a gimbal mounted raw HD imager. Aside from it’s many benefits we now, on occasion have bug splats in our video. To provide the best quality video for our client we would like to remove these splats.

For one project in particular we have a total of 40 hours of video, 10 hours have bug splats. Though it’s a big task to remove setting up a bank of computers to crunch through it 24/7 is no big deal. It has to have good results though.

I have tested a number of software packages and NukeX is what I will purchase but I’m still unsure if the job can be done well.

I have attached 2 frames to this post and each frame has an original and a nuked (rigremoval) version. In the first frame the bug splat is just over ground and in all frames like these the bug removal is near perfect. The second frame is taken from 3 seconds later where the splat crosses over part of the transmission tower and the tower is deformed by the rigremoval. Sadly, this part is more important than the ground. Even under the deformed portion of the tower the ground looks great but I guess there is much less change in perspective for the ground (plus more pixels of information) than there is for the top of the tower.

I am wondering if there are any here that know techniques that could improve this. I’m quite new to Nuke and am sure these is a lot I’m unaware of. If a video sample would be helpful just ask.

First frame – Nuked
Attachment 11421

First frame – original
Attachment 11422

Second frame – Nuked
Attachment 11423

Second frame – original
Attachment 11424