Hi, I made this movie compalation a little while back. I used some movie converting tools and whatnot, and long story (gong show) short, I'm left with this stupid-ass watermark thorughout the entire film(s). I'm almost sure that it is set into the video, so what I was hoping to do was find a way to blend the watermark into each frame of the video(s). As the watermark does not move, I was hoping to find a program in which I can select the area to be blended in one frame, and then have the program go through the rest of the video and blend that selected area in all of the other frames. Well, if you understood that, I would appreciate any suggestions. If you know of any programs that might be able to do this, it would also be awsome. Also, if you could tell me a little about it(them) that would help out alot too. i.e. if the quality of the rest of the movie will be degraded, what the quality of the former watermarked area will be like, time required to complete the task (hopefully given in hours, not days :-|)... To note: the movie is a compalation of home videos, ranging from an avg of 4000mps-9000mps in 4 0.99gig files, really good quality (high quality digital video camera).
Rip the video to avi, using a "lossless" codec such as huffyuv. Apply the "Region Remove" codec, by Shaun Faulds in virtualdub. Frameserve it to an encoder, re-encode to mpeg-2, and author back to DVD. I'm sure there's probably a simpler way, but I haven't found it.
sorry to be the noob that I am, but how can I framserve it? I understand what it is, but I've never had to do it (so I don't remember seeing it)... I'm guessing it's an option in an encoder. I have to go to university right now, but I will try to figure it out when I get home. The only reason why I'm asking is that I have a 12 hour day, with only 30 min break in it, so when I get home I will be pretty brain dead (I don't know if I will be able to figure it out then ). thanks rebootjim P.S. there is a chance that the visible watermark might have been set into the video itself though. That big hoopla I was talking about involved this being a copy of the origional made by somone I had given the origional to. As this is a family computer, despite my best efforts the harddrive had to be formated so deleting the origional. I sware it, every 6 months or so the computer messes up in a new and interesting way (at least I know how to prevent the computer from messing up in those ways now)... On the plus side, viruses as a major threat are passe , just the last week I noticed that my computer was running with 85 (!!85!!) processes, and I had to go through each one individually to find out what we needed and what we didn't. I couldn't even burn a CD at 4x on a 40x burner anymore because the computer was runing so slow!
Yes, the watermark is embedded into the video. To frameserve from virtualdub, you need an encoder that can recognize virtualdub's output. Tmpgenc, Mainconcept, CCE, and Canopus Procoder can do it. To use frameserving, open up the folder where virtualdub is installed, click on AuxSetup.exe to install the frameserving client. Open the video in virtualdub, do your editing, filtering, etc, then click File, Start frameserver. Give it a name, and it will end with .vdr Open the .vdr file in the encoder, and encode as normal. You MUST leave the framserving client running the whole time!
wow, I didn't think that one through. I had seen somewhere that removing the regional info in a DVD can prevent a watermark, and in some cases remove it. When I looked at the name "region remove" I figured thats what you were talking about. Thanks for clarifying, some times obvious isn't obvious enough
Yeah, I should have said, "Region Remove filter..." not "codec". It's used mostly for removing the logo that TV stations put on the bottom right of the screen, although it can be used to remove almost ANYthing from encoded video. It doesn't actually remove it, it simply blends the surrounding pixels into, and over it, so it can be a little blurry if used on large areas. I've used it on those banner logos that some sites put on the bottom of their downloadable videos, somewhere in the 170x20 pixel size. It's not noticable, especially on the bottom of the screen, where TV overscan partially obscures it anyhow.
actually what I'm blurring out is a text banner. I noticed that if I tried to blur out the entire banner with one block it was pretty blurry, so what I did instead was select each character individually. It took a little extra time, but you can't notice a difference at all if you don't know what to look for. By the way, I found another filter called "Logoaway v4.01" that does the same thing as Region Remove. They seem pretty similar, but this other one has some extra options (what direction the blur origionates from, the blur power...ect...). You might want to check it, those options make a huge difference when your blurring out areas that aren't exacly square. Heres a site to download it from, plus theres some other filters there that might be useful: http://www.republika.pl/vander74/virtualdub/ What I was thinking of next is mabey finding another filter that might be able to enhance those blurred areas. I figure there must be something that will be able to sharpen the blurred areas as well as create a general fill-in of the missing image based on the areas around the blur. It wouldn't be perfect, but the fill-in would be even less noticable then. If you have any leads that would be awsome, but you've already been a great help, thanks.
Yes, I've used logoaway as well. That was actually my next suggestion AFAIK, there is no way to re-enhance the blurred area. Once the digital info is missing, it cannot be reconstructed. If you use "soft edges" in region remove, it smoothes it out quite a bit more.
yeah I noticed that, but with soft edges, you need a larger area selected (the area to be blurred plus the soft edge pixel width). I had some trouble deciding if I should use the soft edges (which near doubled the blurred area, since I was blurring such small places) or not.
