One problem that users can run into with our Flicker Free deflicker plugin is that it will look across edits when analyzing frames for the correct luminance. The plugin looks backwards as well as forwards to gather frames and does a sophisticated blend of all those frames. So even if you create an edit, say to remove an unwanted camera shift or person walking in front of the camera, Flicker Free will still see those frames. This is particularly a problem with Detect Motion turned OFF. The way around this is to Nest (i.e. Pre-compose (AE), Compound Clip (FCP)) the edit and apply the plugin to the new sequence. The new sequence will start at the first frame of the edit and Flicker Free won’t be able to see the frames before the edit. This is NOT something you always have to do. It’s only if the frames before the edit are significantly different than the ones after it (i.e. a completely different scene or some crazy camera movement). 99% of the time it’s not a problem. This tutorial shows how to solve the problem in Premiere Pro. The technique works the same in other applications. Just replacing ‘Nesting’ with whatever your host application does (pre-composing, making a compound clip, etc).
Comparing Beauty Box To other Video Plugins for Skin Retouching/Digital Makeup
We get a lot of questions about how Beauty Box compares to other filters out there for digital makeup. There’s a few things to consider when buying any plugin and I’ll go over them here. I’m not going to compare Beauty Box with any filter specifically, but when you download the demo plugin and compare it with the results from other filters this is what you should be looking at: Quality of results Ease of use Speed Support Support I’ll start with Support because it’s one thing most people don’t consider. We offer as good of support as anyone in the industry. You can email or call us (415-287-6069). M-F 10am-5pm PST. In addition, we also check email on the weekends and frequently in the evenings on weekdays. Usually you’ll get a response from Tor, our rockstar QA guy, but not infrequently you’ll talk to myself as well. Not often you get tech support from the guy that designed the software. 🙂 Quality of Results The reason you see Beauty Box used for skin retouching on everything from major tentpole feature films to web commercials, is the incredible quality of the digital makeup. Since it’s release in 2009 as the first plugin to specifically address skin retouching beyond just blurring out skin tones, the quality of the results has been critically acclaimed. We won several awards with version 1.0 and we’ve kept improving it since then. You can see many examples here of Beauty Box’s digital makeup, but we recommend you download the demo plugin and try it yourself. Things to look for as you compare the results of different plugins: Skin Texture: Does the skin look realistic? Is some of the pore structure maintained or is everything just blurry? It should, usually, look like regular makeup unless you’re going for a stylized effect. Skin Color: Is there any change in skin tones? Temporal Consistency: Does it look the same from frame to frame over time? Are there any noticeable seams where the retouching stops. Masking: How accurate is the mask of the skin tones? Are there any noticeable seams between skin and non-skin areas? How easy is it to adjust the mask? Ease of Use One of the things we strive for with all our plugins is to make it as easy as possible to get great results with very little work on your end. Software should make your life easier. In most cases, you should be able to click on Analyze Frame, make an adjustment to the Skin Smoothing amount to dial in the look you want and be good to go. There are always going to be times when it requires a bit more work but for basic retouching of video, there’s no easier solution than Beauty Box. When comparing filters, the thing to look for here is how easy is it to setup the effect and get a good mask of the skin tones? How long does it take and how accurate is it? Speed If you’ve used Beauty Box for a while, you know that the only complaint we had with it with version 1.0 was that it was slow. No more! It’s now fully GPU optimized and with some of the latest graphics cards you’ll get real time performance, particularly in Premiere Pro. Premiere has added better GPU support and between that the Beauty Box’s use of the GPU, you can get real time playback of HD pretty easily. And of course we support many different host apps, which gives you a lot of flexibility in where you can use it. Avid, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Davinci Resolve, Assimilate Scratch, Sony Vegas, and NUKE are all supported. Hopefully that gives you some things to think about as you’re comparing Beauty Box with other plugins that claim to be as good. All of these things factor into why Beauty Box is so highly regarded and considered to be well worth the price.
Back Care for Video Editors Part 3: Posture Exercises: The Good and The Bad
Posture Exercises: The Good and The Bad There are a lot of books out there on how to deal with back pain. Most of them are relatively similar and have good things to say. Most of them also have minor problems, but overall, with a little guidance from a good physical therapist, they’re very useful. You don’t need to sit on ice to get good posture! The two of I’ve been using are: Back RX by Vijay Vad 8 Steps to a Pain Free Back (Gokhale Method) Both have some deficiencies but overall are good and complement each other. I’ll talk about the good stuff first and get into my problems with them later (mostly minor issues). There’s also another book, Healing Back Pain, which I’m looking into and says some valuable things. It posits that the main cause of the pain is not actually structural (disc problems, arthritis, etc) but in most cases caused by stress and the muscles tensing. I’ll do a separate post on it as I think the mind plays a significant role and this book has some merit. BackRX Back RX is a series of exercise routines designed to strengthen your back. It pulls from Yoga, Pilates, and regular physical therapy for inspiration. If you do them on a regular basis, you’ll start improving the strength in your abs and back muscles which should help relieve pain over the long term. As someone that’s done Yoga for quite some time, partially in response to the repetitive stress problems I had from using computers, I found the routines very natural. Even if you haven’t done Yoga, the poses are mostly easy, many of them have you lying on the floor, and are healthy for your back. You won’t find the deep twisting and bending poses you might be encouraged to do at a regular yoga studio. It also encourages mind/body awareness and focuses a bit on breathing exercises. The book doesn’t do a great job of explaining how to do this. If you’re not already a yoga practitioner or have a meditation practice you’ll need some guidance. The exercises have plenty of value even if you don’t get into that part of it. However, mindfulness is important. Here are a few resources on using meditation for chronic pain: Full Catastrophe Living Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction You Are Not Your Pain Gokhale Method The 8 Steps to a Pain Free Back (Gokhale Method) is another good book that takes a different approach. BackRX provides exercise routines you can do in about 20 minutes. The Gokhale Method shows modifications to the things we do all the time… lying, sitting, standing, bending, etc. These are modifications you’re supposed to make throughout the day. She has something of a backstory about how doctors these days don’t know what a spine should look like and that people had different shaped spines in the past. In a nutshell, the argument is that because we’ve become so much more sedentary over the last 100 years (working in offices, couch potato-ing, etc) our spines are less straight and doctors now think this excessively curved spine is ‘normal’. I’m very skeptical of this as some of her claims are easily debunked (more on that later). However, it does not take away from the value of the exercises. Whether you buy into her marketing or not, she’s still promoting good posture and that’s the important bit. Some of her exercises you will find similar to other Posture books. Other Gokhale exercises are novel. They may not all resonate with you, but I’ve found several to be quite useful. All of the exercises focus on lengthening the spine and provide ways to hold that posture above and beyond the usual ‘Sit up straight!’. She sells a small cushion that mounts on the back of your chair. I’ve found this useful, if only in constantly reminding me to not slump in my Steelcase chair (completely offsetting why you spent the money on a fancy chair). It prevents me from leaning back in the chair, which is the first step to slumping. It also does help keep your back a bit more straight. There are some chairs that are not well designed and the cushion does help. In both books, there’s an emphasis on stretching your spine and strengthening your ab/core muscles and back muscles. BackRX focuses more on the strengthening, Gokhale focuses more on the stretching. But ultimately they only work if you’re committed to doing them over the long term. You also have to be vigilant about your posture. If you’re in pain, this isn’t hard as your back will remind with pain whenever you’re not doing things correctly. It’s harder if you’re just trying to develop good habits and you’re not in pain already. Most people don’t think about this at all, which is why 80% of the US population will develop back pain problems at some point. So even if you only read the Gokhale book and just work on bending/sitting/walking better you’ll be ahead of the game. So what are the problems with the books? Both the Gokhale Method and BackRX have some issues. (again, these don’t really detract from the exercises in the book… but before you run out and tell your doctor his medical school training is wrong, you might want to consider these points) Gokhale makes many claims in her book. Most of them involve how indigenous cultures sit/walk/etc and how little back pain is in those cultures. These are not easily testable. However, she makes other claims that can be tested. For one, she shows a drawing of a spine from around 1900 and drawing that she claims was in a recent anatomy book. She put this forth as evidence that spines used to look different and that modern anatomy books don’t show spines they way they’re supposed to look. This means modern doctors are being taught incorrectly and thus don’t know what a spine should look like.
Computers and Back Care part 2: Forward Bending
Go to Part 1 in the Back Care series Most folks know how to pick up a heavy box. Squat down, keep your back reasonably flat and upright and use your legs to lift. However, most folks do not know how to plug in a power cord. (as the below photo shows) Forward bending puts a great deal of stress on your back and we do it hundreds of times a day. Picking up your keys, putting your socks on, plugging in a power cord, and on and on. This is why people frequently throw their backs out sneezing or picking up some insignificant thing off the floor like keys or clothing. While normally these don’t cause much trouble, the hundreds of bends a day add up. Especially if you sit in a chair all day and are beating up your back with a bad chair or bad posture. Over time all of it weakens your back, degrades discs, and causes back pain. So what to do? There are a couple books I can recommend. Both have some minor issues but overall they’re very good. I’ll talk about them in detail in Part 3 of this series. Back RX by Vijay Vad 8 Steps To a Pain Free Back by Esther Gokhale Obviously for heavy objects, keep doing what you’re probably already doing: use your legs to lift. But you also want to use your legs to pick up almost any object. Using the same technique to pick up small objects works as well. That said, all the squatting can be a bit tough on the knees, so lets talk about hip hinging. (the image shows a woman stretching but she’s doing it with a good hip hinge. Since it’s a stretch, it’s, uh, a bit more exaggerated than you’d do picking something up. Not a perfect image for this post, but we’ll roll with it.) Imagine your hip as a door hinge. Your upright back as the door and your legs as the wall. Keep your back mostly flat and hinge at the hips. Tilting your pelvis instead of bending your back. Then bend your legs to get the rest of the way to the floor. This puts less strain on your back and not as much strain on your knees as going into a full squat. Also, part of it is to engage your abs as you’re hinging. Strong abs help maintain a strong back. There’s some disagreement on the best way to do this. Some say bend forward (with your knees slightly bent) until you feel a stretch in your hamstrings, then bend your knees. I usually hinge the back and bend the knees at the same time. This feels better for my body, but everyone is different so try it both ways. There is some truth that the more length you have in your hamstrings, the more you can hinge. However, since most people, especially those that sit a lot, have tight hamstrings, it’s just easier to hinge and bend at the same time. But the really important bit is to be mindful of when you’re bending, regardless of how you do it. Your back isn’t going to break just from some forward bending, but the more you’re aware of how often you bend and doing it correctly as often as possible, the better off you’ll be. This also applies to just doing regular work, say fixing a faucet or something where you have to be lower to the ground. If you can squat and keep a flat back instead of bending over to do the work, you’ll also be better off. If this is totally new to you, then your back may feel a little sore as you use muscles you aren’t used to using. This is normal and should go away. However, it’s always good to check in with your doctor and/or physical therapist when doing anything related to posture. In Part 3 I’ll discuss the books I mentioned above and some other resources for exercises and programs.
Taking Care of Your Back for Video Editors, Part 1: The Chair
Software developers, like video editors, sit a lot. I’ve written before about my challenges with Repetitive Stress Problems and how I dealt with them. (Awesome chair, great ergonomics, and a Wacom tablet). These problems are more about my wrists, shoulders, and neck. I fully admit to ignoring everyone’s advice about sitting properly and otherwise taking care of my back, so I expect you’ll probably igrnore this (unless you already have back pain). But you shouldn’t. And maybe some of you will listen and get some tips to help you avoid having to take a daily diet of pain meds just to get through a video edit. I’ve also always had problems with my back. The first time I threw it out I was 28, playing basketball. Then add in being physically active in a variety of other ways… martial arts, snowboarding, yoga, etc… my back has taken some beatings over the years. And then you factor in working at a job for the last 20 years that has me sitting a lot. And not sitting very well for most of those 20 years. Hunched over a keyboard and slouching in your chair at the same time is a great way of beating the hell out of your back and the rest of your body. But that was me. So, after a lot of pain and an MRI showing a couple degraded discs, I’m finally taking my back seriously. This is the first of several blog posts detailing some of the things I’ve learned and what I’m doing for my back. I figure it might help some of you all. I’ll start with the most obvious thing: Your chair. Not only your chair BUT SITTING UPRIGHT IN IT. It doesn’t help you to have a $1000 chair if you’re going to slouch in it. (which I’m known to be guilty of) The key thing about the chair is that it’s adjustable in as many ways as possible. This way you can set it up perfectly for your body, which is key. Personally, I have a Steelcase chair which I like, but most high end chairs are very configurable and come in different sizes. (I’m not sure the ‘ball chair’ is going to be good for video editing, but some people love them for normal office work) There are also adjustable standing desks, which allow you to alternate between sitting and standing, which is great. Being in any single position for too long is stressful on your body. The other key thing is your posture. Actually sitting in the chair correctly. There are slightly different opinions on what is precisely the best sitting posture (see Part 3 for more on this), but generally, the illustration below is a good upright position. Feet on the ground, knees at right angles, butt all the way back with some spine curvature, but not too much, the shoulders slightly back and the head above the shoulders (not forward as we often do, which puts a lot of strain on the neck. If you keep leaning in to see your monitor, get glasses or move the monitor closer!). It can also help to have your abdominal muscle engaged to prevent to much curvature in the spine. This can be a little bit of work, but if you’re paying attention to your posture, then it should just come naturally as you maintain the upright position. There’s a little bit of disagreement on how much curvature you should have while sitting. Some folks recommend even less than what you see above. We’ll talk more about it in Part 3. One other important thing is to take breaks, either walk around or stretch. Sitting for long periods really puts a lot of stress on your discs and is somewhat unnatural for your body, as your ancestors probably weren’t doing a lot of chair sitting. Getting up to walk, do a midday yoga class, or just doing a little stretching every 45 minutes or so will make a big difference. This is one of the reasons a standing desk is helpful. So that’s it for part 1. Get yourself a good chair and learn how to sit in it! It’ll greatly help you keep a healthy, happy back. In Part 2 we’ll discuss picking up your keys, sneezing, and other dangers to back health lurking in plain sight.
The Problem of Slow Motion Flicker during Big Sporting Events: NCAA Tournament
Shooting slow motion footage, especially very high speed shots like 240fps or 480fps, results in flicker if you don’t have high quality lights. Stadiums often have low quality industrial lighting, LEDs, or both. Resulting in flicker during slow motion shots even on nationally broadcast, high profile sporting events. I was particularly struck by this watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament this weekend. Seemed like I was seeing flicker on half of the slow motion shots. You can see a few in this video (along with Flicker Free plugin de-flickered versions of the same footage): To see how to get rid of the flicker you can check out our tutorial on removing flicker from slow motion sports. The LED lights are most often the problem. They circle the arena and depending on how bright they are, for example if it’s turned solid white, they can cast enough light on the players to cause flicker when played back in slow motion. Even if they don’t cast light on the players they’re visible in the background flickering. Here’s a photo of the lights I’m talking about in Oracle arena (white band of light going around the stadium): While Flicker Free won’t work for live production, it works great for de-flickering this type of flicker if you can render it in a video editing app, as you can see in the original example. It’s a common problem even for pro sports or high profile sporting events (once you start looking for it, you see it a lot). So if you run into with your footage, check out the Flicker Free plugin for most video editing applications!
Tips on Photographing Whales – Underwater and Above
I’ve spent the last 7 years going out to Maui during the winter to photograph whales. Hawaii is the migration destination of the North Pacific Humpback Whales. Over the course of four months, it’s estimated that about 12,000 whales migrate from Alaska to Hawaii. During the peak months Jan 15 – March 15th or so, there’s probably about 6000+ whales around Hawaii. This creates a really awesome opportunity to photograph them as they are EVERYWHERE. Many of the boats that go out are small, zodiac type boats. This allows you to hang over the side if you’ve got an underwater camera. Very cool if they come up to the boat, as this picture shows! (you can’t dive with them as it’s a national sanctuary for the whales) The result is shots like this below the water: Or above the water: So ya wanna be whale paparazzi? Here are a few tips on getting great photographs of whales: 1- Patience: Most of the time the whales are below the water surface and out of range of an underwater camera. There’s a lot of ‘whale waiting’ going on. It may take quite a few trips before a whale gets close enough to shoot underwater. To capture the above the water activity you really need to pay attention. Frequently it happens very quickly and is over before you can even get your camera up if you’re distracted by talking or looking at photos on your camera. Stay present and focused. 2- Aperture Priority mode: Both above and below the water I set the camera to Aperture Priority and set the lowest aperture I can, getting it as wide open as possible. You want as fast of a shutter speed as possible (for 50 ton animals they can move FAST!) and setting it to the widest aperture will do that. You also want that nice depth of field a low fstop will give you. 3- AutoFocus: You have to have autofocus turned on. The action happens to fast to manually focus. Also, use AF points that are calculated in both the horizontal and vertical axes. Not all AF points are created the same. 4- Lenses: For above the water, the 100mm-400mm is a good lens for the distance the boats usually tend to stay from the whales. It’s not great if the whales come right up to the boat… but that’ s when you bust out your underwater camera with a very wide angle or fisheye lens. With underwater photography, at least in Maui, you can only photograph the whales if they come close to the boat. You’re not going to be able to operate a zoom lens hanging over the side of a boat. So set a pretty wide focal length when you put it into the housing. I’ve got a 12-17mm Tokina fisheye and usually set it to about 14mm. This means the whale has to be within about 10 feet of the boat to get a good shot. But due to underwater visibility, that’s pretty much the case no matter what lens you have on the camera. 5- Burst Shooting: Make sure you set the camera to burst mode. The more photos the camera can take when you press and hold the shutter button the better. 6- Luck: You need a lot of luck. But part of luck is being prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that come up. So if you get a whale that’s breaching over and over, stay focused with your camera ready because you don’t know where he’s going to come up. Or if a whale comes up to the boat make sure that underwater camera is ready with a fully charged battery, big, empty flash card and you know how to use the controls on the housing. (trust me… most of these tips were learned the hard way) Many whale watches will mostly be comprised of ‘whale waiting’. But if you stay present and your gear is set up correctly, you’ll be in great shape to capture those moments when you’re almost touched by a whale!
Avoiding Prop Flicker when Shooting Drone Video Footage
We released a new tutorial showing how to remove prop flicker, so if you have flicker problems on drone footage, check that out. (It’s also at the bottom of this post) But what if you want to avoid prop flicker altogether? Here’s a few tips: But first, let’s take a look at what it is. Here’s an example video: 1- Don’t shoot in such a way that the propellers are between the sun and the camera. The reason prop flicker happens is the props are casting shadows onto the lens. If the sun is above and in front of the lens, that’s where you’ll get the shadows and the flicker. (shooting sunrise or sunset is fine because the sun is below the props) 1b- Turning the camera just slightly from the angle generating the flicker will often get rid of the flicker. You can see this in the tutorial below on removing the flicker. 2- Keep the camera pointed down slightly. It’s more likely to catch the shadows if it’s pointing straight out from the drone at 90 degrees (parallel to the props). Tilt it down a bit, 10 or 20 degrees, and that helps a lot. 3- I’ve seen lens hoods for the cameras. Sounds like they help, but I haven’t personally tried one. Unfortunately sometimes you have to shoot something in such a way that you can’t avoid the prop flicker. In which cases using a plugin like Flicker Free allows you to eliminate or reduce the flicker problem. You can see how to deflicker videos with prop flicker in the below tutorial.
Removing Flicker from Drone Video Footage caused by Prop Flicker
Drones are all the rage at the moment, deservedly so as some of the images and footage being shot with them are amazing. However, one problem that occurs is that if the drone is shooting with the camera at the right angle to the sun, shadows from the props cause flickering in the video footage. This can be a huge problem, making the video unusable. It turns out that our Flicker Free plugin is able to do a good job of removing or significantly reducing this problem. (of course, this forced us to go out and get one. Research, nothing but research!) Here’s an example video showing exactly what prop flicker is and why it happens: There are ways around getting the flicker in the first place: Don’t shoot into the sun, have the camera pointing down, etc. However, sometimes you’re not able to shoot with ideal conditions and you end up with flicker. Our latest tutorial goes over how to solve the prop flicker issue with our Flicker Free plugin. The technique works in After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Avid, Resolve, etc. However the tutorial shows Flicker Free being used in Premiere Pro. The full tutorial is below. You can even download the original flickering drone video footage and AE/Premiere project files by clicking here.
Speeding Up Flicker Free: The Order You Apply Plugins in Your Video Editing App
One key way of speeding up the Flicker Free plugin is putting it first in the order of effects. What does this mean? Let’s say you’re using the Lumetri Color Corrector in Premiere. You want to apply Flicker Free first, then apply Lumetri. You’ll see about a 300+% speed increase vs. doing it with Lumetri first. So it looks like this: Why the Speed Difference? Flicker Free has to analyze multiple frames to de-flicker the footage you’re using. It looks at up to 21 frames. If you have the effect applied before Flicker Free it means Lumetri is being applied TWENTY ONE times for every frame Flicker Free renders. And especially with a slow effect like Lumetri that will definitely slow everything down. It fact, on slower machines it can bring Premiere to a grinding halt. Premiere has to render the other effect on 21 frames in order to render just one frame for Flicker Free. In this case, Flicker Free takes up a lot of memory, the other effect can take up a lot of memory and things start getting ugly fast. Renders with Happy Endings So to avoid this problem, just apply Flicker Free before any other effects. This goes for pretty much every video editing app. The render penalty will vary depending on the host app and what effect(s) you have applied. For example, using the Fast Color Corrector in Premiere Pro resulted in a slow down of only about 10% (vs. Lumetri and a slow down of 320%). In After Effects the slow down was about 20% with just the Synthetic Aperture color corrector that ships with AE. However, if you add more filters it can get a lot worse. Either way, you’ll have much happier render times if you put Flicker Free first. Hopefully this makes some sense. I’ll go into a few technical details for those that are interested. (Feel free to stop reading if it’s clear you just need to put Flicker Free first) (oh, and here are some other ways of speeding up Flicker Free) Technical Details With all host applications, Flicker Free, like all plugins, has to request frames through the host application API. With most plugins, like the Beauty Box Video plugin, the plugin only needs to request the current frame. You want to render frame X: Premiere Pro (or Avid, FCP, etc) has to load the frame, render any plugins and then display it. Plugins get rendered in the order you apply them. Fairly straightforward. The Flicker Free plugin is different. It’s not JUST looking at the current frame. In order to figure out the correct luminance for each pixel (thus removing flicker) it has to look at pixels both before and after the current frame. This means it has to ask the API for up to 21 frames, analyze them, return the result to Premiere, which then finishes rendering the current frame. So the API says, “Yes, I will do your bidding and get those 21 frames. But first, I must render them!”. And so it does. If there are no plugins applied to them, this is easy. It just hands Flicker Free the 21 original frames and goes on its merry way. If there are plugins applied, the API has to render those on each frame it gives to Flicker Free. FF has to wait around for all 21 frames to be rendered before it can render the current frame. It waits, therefore that means YOU wait. If you need a long coffee break these renders can be great. If not, they are frustrating. If you use After Effects you may be familiar with pre-comping a layer with effects so that you can use it within a plugin applied to a different layer. This goes through a different portion of the API than when a plugin requests frames programmatically from AE. In the case of a layer in the layer pop-up the plugin just gets the original image with no effects applied. If the plugin actually asks AE for the frame one frame before it, AE has to render it. One other thing that affects speed behind the scenes… some apps are better at caching frames that plugins ask for than other apps. After Effects does this pretty well, Premiere Pro less so. So this helps AE have faster render times when using Flicker Free and rendering sequentially. If you’re jumping around the timeline then this matters less. Hopefully this helps you get better render times from Flicker Free. The KEY thing to remember however, is ALWAYS APPLY FLICKER FREE FIRST! Happy Rendering!
Beauty Work for Corporate Video
We love to talk about how Beauty Box Video is used on feature films by the likes of Local Hero Post and Park Road Post Production or broadcast TV by NBC or Fox. That’s the big, sexy stuff. However, many, if not most, of our customers are like Brian Smith. Using Beauty Box for corporate clients or local commercials. They might not be winning Emmy awards for their work but they’re still producing great videos with, usually, limited budgets. “The time and budget does not usually afford us the ability to bring in a makeup artist. People that aren’t used to being on camera are often very self-conscious, and they cringe at the thought of every wrinkle or imperfection detracting from their message.”, said Brian, Founder of Ideaship Studios in Tulsa, OK. “Beauty Box has become a critical part of our Final Cut X pipeline because it solves a problem, it’s blazing fast, and it helps give my clients and on-camera talent confidence. They are thrilled with the end result, and that leads to more business for us.” An Essential Tool for Beauty Work and Retouching Beauty Box Video has become an essential tool at many small production houses or in-house video departments to retouch makeup-less/bad lighting situations and still end up with a great looking production. The ability to quickly retouch skin with an automatic mask without needing to go frame by frame is important. However, it’s usually the quality of retouching that Beauty Box provides that’s the main selling point. image courtesy of Ideaship Studios Beauty Box goes beyond just blurring skin tones. We strive to keep the skin texture and not just mush it up. You want to have the effect of the skin looking like skin, not plastic, which is important for beauty work. Taking a few years off talent and offsetting the harshness that HD/4K and video lights can add to someone. The above image of one of Brian’s clients is a good example. When viewed at full resolution, the wrinkles are softened but not obliterated. The skin is smoothed but still shows pores. The effect is really that of digital makeup, as if you actually had a makeup artist to begin with. You can see this below in the closeup of the two images. Of course, the video compression in the original already has reduced the detail in the skin, but Beauty Box does a nice job of retaining much of what is there. ” On the above image, we did not shoot her to look her best. The key light was a bit too harsh, creating shadows and bringing out the lines. I applied the Beauty Box Video plugin, and the shots were immediately better by an order of magnitude. This was just after simply applying the plugin. A few minutes of tweaking the mask color range and effects sliders really dialed in a fantastic look. I don’t like the idea of hiding flaws. They are a natural and beautiful part of every person. However, I’ve come to realize that bringing out the true essence of a person or performance is about accentuating, not hiding. Beauty Box is a great tool for doing that.” – Brian Smith Go for Natural Retouching Of course, you can go too far with it, as with anything. So some skill and restraint is often needed to get the effect of regular makeup and not making the subject look ‘plastic’ or blurred. As Brain says, you want things to look natural. However, when used appropriately you can get some amazing results, making for happy clients and easing the concerns of folks that aren’t always in front of a camera. (particularly men, since they tend to not want to wear makeup… and don’t realize how much they need it until they see themselves on a 65″ 4K screen. 😉 One last tip, you can often easily improve the look of Beauty Box even more by using tracking masks for beauty work, as you can see in the tutorials that link goes to. The ability of these masks to automatically track the points that make up the mask and move them as your subject moves is a huge deal for beauty work. It makes it much easier to isolate an area like a cheek or the forehead, just as a makeup artist would.
Removing Flicker from Stadium Lights in Slow Motion Football Video
One common problem you see a lot is flickering from stadium lights when football or other sports are played back in slow motion. You’ll even see it during the NFL football playoffs. Stadium lights tend to be low quality lights and the brightness fluctuates. You can’t see it normally, but play video back at 240fps… and flicker is everywhere. Aaron at Griffin Wing Video Productions ran into this problem shooting video of the high school football championship at the North Carolina State stadium. It was a night game and he got some great slomo shots shooting with the Sony FS700, but a ton of flicker from the stadium lights. Let’s take a look at a couple of his examples and break down how our Flicker Free plugin fixed the problem for him. First example is just a player turning his head as he gazes down on the field. There’s not a lot of fast movement so this is relatively easy. Here are the Flicker Free plugin parameters from within After Effects (although it works the same if you’re using Premiere, FCP, Avid, etc.) Notice that ‘Detect Motion’ is turned off and the settings for Sensitivity and Time Radius. Well discuss those in a moment. Here’s a second example of a wide receiver catching the football. Here there’s a lot more action (even in slow motion), so the plugin needs different settings to compensate for that motion. Here’s the before/after video footage: Here are the Flicker Free plugin settings: So, what’s going on? You’ll notice that Detect Motion is off. Detect Motion tries to eliminate the ghosting (see below for an example) that can happen when removing flicker from a bunch of frames. (FF analyzes multiple frames to find the correct luminance for each pixel. But ghosts or trails can appear if the pixel is moving) Unfortunately it also reduces the flicker removal capabilities. The video footage we have of the football team has some pretty serious flicker so we need Detect Motion off. With Detect Motion off we need to worry about ghosting. This means we need to reduce the Time Radius to a relatively low value. Time Radius tells Flicker Free how many frames to look at before and after the current frame. So if it’s set to 5, it’ll analyze 11 frames: the current frame, 5 before it, and 5 after it. The more frames you analyze, the greater the chance objects will have moved in other frames… resulting in ghosting. With the player looking our the window, there’s not a lot of motion. Just the turning of his head. So we can get away with a Time Radius of 5 and a Sensitivity of 3. (More about Sensitivity in a moment) The video with the receiver catching the ball has a LOT more motion. Each frame is very different from the next. So there’s a good chance of ghosting. Here we’ve set Time Radius to 3, so it’s analyzing a total of 7 frames, and set Sensitivity to 10. A Time Radius of 3 is about as low as you can realistically go. In this case it works and the flicker is gone. (As you can see in the above video) Here’s an example of the WRONG settings and what ‘ghosting’ looks like: Sensitivity is, more or less, how large of an area the Flicker Free plugin analyzes. Usually I start with a low value like 3 and increase it to find a value that works best. Frequently a setting of 3 works as lower values reduce the flicker more. However, low values can result in more ghosting, so if you have a lot of motion sometimes 5 or 10 works better. For the player turning his head, three was fine. For the receiver we needed to increase it to 10. So that’s a breakdown of how to get rid of flicker from stadium lights! Thanks to Aaron at Griffin Wing Video Productions for the footage. You can see their final video documenting the High School Football Championship on YouTube. And you can also view more Flicker Free tutorials if you need additional info on how to get the most out of the Flicker Free plugin in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid, or Resolve.
