Microfilmmaker Magazine - Tips & Tricks - The Final Cut Flyswatter: Using Masks to Delete Problems in FCP, Pg. 1 of 5


	The Final Cut Flyswatter: Using Masks to Delete Problems in FCP

by Troy Lanier

The following article shows you how to use Final Cut Pro's Mask Shape Filter and Garbage Matte Filter to remove a flying insect from a shot even when that flying insect is right in front of an actors moving face. The method has also proven helpful for removing a stray shotgun mic or a boom pole shadow. While more sophisticated tools exist for this type of correction (for example: Combustion), this article sticks with Final Cut. (If you would prefer to download the Acrobat version of this article, click here.)

The Problem:
While I was editing "DueDads: The Man's Survival Guide to Pregnancy" a pretty serious problem cropped up. I came upon a scene in which only one take was worth keeping. And even this take had a problem: there was a flying insect in the scene. Even worse, the insect flew in front of the actor's face. I could either scrap the crucial scene or get rid of the bug. It was time to get out the Final Cut Fly Swatter.

You can see the insect as a white blur in the upper left of this screen shot (fig 1) or the enlargement (fig 2).

While the insect may not seem distracting in this still, the insect jumps out of the screen when the clip is put into motion. To see the actual clip, click here. To see the corrected version, click here.

As it moves across the screen from left to right you can see the white blur get closer to his head (fig 3 and 4) and then the white blur is suddenly right on top of his hair (fig 5 and 6).

Overview of the solution:
The two methods I describe below both rely on removing an are of the shot in which there is a bug, and then replacing it with the same area a few frames earlier in which there was no bug. When the bug is in front of something that moves from frame to frame, not only must you temporally shift your footage, you must also spatially move it within the frame.