The NAB show in Las Vegas has come and gone as it always does, and in the plethora of new gear, announcements, keynotes, and different companies on the stage, Blackmagic Design have unveiled their new version of the popular post-production suite DaVinci Resolve 16, once used only for color grading and now for the entire creative process from start to finish.
It seems that the CEO Grant Petty has been keeping the engines on warp speed during the whole year since we saw him last time when he presented the Pocket 4K.
The latest iteration of DaVinci Resolve, in fact, has a bunch of new and interesting features, starting with a brand new page in the interface, but that’s not what we are here for today. The cut page and it’s modern and sleek interface will have to wait, as the following tutorial produced by Jason Bullock focuses on object removal within Resolve 16.
So, the name of the tool is quite self-explanatory. In DaVinci Resolve 16, there’s this new functionality that allows you to eliminate moving objects across the frame. Note that the moving element should be occupying a comparatively small part of the frame. Otherwise, the trick simply won’t work.
Once you import the file, move from the Media page to the Color page, where you can proceed with adding a serial node. Next, you’ll need to add a mask around the element in question to give the AI behind the effect some data to play with. The mask can be rough, no need for extreme precision now, just make sure it’s not too sloppy while giving it a realistic tolerance to get the best results.
Now, it’s a matter of getting the tracker going. Double check this step as it’s better to give it another round if you are not completely certain of the result since a good part of the success in this workflow comes from a good tracking.
Once you’re satisfied with the outcome, you can go in the effects tab and look for the ResolveFX Revival, where you can find the Object Removal Tool. Just drag and drop the latter on the serial node where you’ve done the tracking, right click and check the use of the Alpha channel option.
In the tab of the effect, there is a little Scene Analysis button, just click it and you may see the mask you’ve created earlier turning to a grey lump on the monitor.
In this case, you’ll need to tinker with the options of the effect itself. Sometimes it may be enough to simply click the Build Clean Plate button. If this doesn’t help, try to adjust the search range or the blend mode in the Render sub-menu as showcased in the video.
Ultimately, you should end up with a clean clip where the disturbing moving element has been successfully removed. What do we make of this new exciting tool? Well, indeed we are still in the early days for this kind of tech, and you should set the expectation at the right level.
This tool operates masking out part of the image, so if your aim is to remove a building or something that takes a good portion of the frame, that is apparently beyond the capabilities of the software.
But if instead, you are a filmmaker that needs to mask out the shadow of a drone, or some little detail or a person walking in the background, then this is with no doubt the right tool for you. Just try it out and let us what you think about the results in the comments below.
[source: Jason Bullock]
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