{"id":661,"date":"2014-10-14T12:18:19","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T11:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jamiebrightmore.com\/?p=661"},"modified":"2015-01-02T01:01:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T01:01:27","slug":"remove-birds-from-a-timelapse-sequence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamiebrightmore.com\/timelapse-photography\/remove-birds-from-a-timelapse-sequence\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Perfectly Remove Birds from a Timelapse Sequence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Birds can be the scourge of a timelapser’s workflow. I often see high-end timelapse clips with birds flicking in-and-out of shot. Personally, I can’t deal with seeing this so will\u00a0always go through the painstaking process of eliminating the feathery squawkers from my work.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from the main goal of a perfect visual aesthetic quality, it’s a actually quite a satisfying process but does require time and patience.<\/p>\n<h2>Can’t I prevent these problems\u00a0while shooting?<\/h2>\n<p>Yes and no. Aside from\u00a0bringing a shotgun along to a shoot, dragging the shutter can often prevent the birds from being captured, albeit the occasional smudge will show depending on the distance between the camera and avian in question.<\/p>\n<p>However, using longer shutter speeds is not always possible, for example when shooting (shutter ramped \/ bramped) sunsets where light is lower and an ND filter can’t be used. In instances like these, you will inevitably capture some crisp dinosaur descendants\u00a0in your sequence.<\/p>\n<h2>Removing the birds (de-birding)<\/h2>\n<p>The first port of call in the quest for perfect bird-less timelapse sequences is to use the spot removal (heal and clone) tool in Lightroom. Laboriously healing a sequence frame-by-frame can work very well, wherever the background is uniform, but there will always be birds that are just impossible to remove, over clouds and complicated backgrounds for example.<\/p>\n<p>So, I’ll always do what I can in Lightroom <em>first<\/em> and then move over to After Effects for some further bird removal processing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nb<\/strong>. While in Lightroom, I will make a note of the frame numbers of any birds which require further work. This helps me to quickly locate the affected frame in After Effects. You can CMD-click the time indicator in AE to switch to show <em>frames<\/em> and enter a specific frame number.<\/p>\n<h2>After Effects Frame Cloning<\/h2>\n<p>Use this recipe which essentially clones \/ masks a portion of the previous frame to seamlessly remove the birds. This technique can also be used to remove other undesirable things from a frame too, for example I’ve used it to remove unwanted humans from sequences. There’s a brief video demo of the technique in action below.<\/p>\n<p>Go forth and enjoy perfection in your\u00a0clips : )<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Find \/ go to frame containing a\u00a0bird<\/li>\n<li>Duplicate the main sequence layer – name as ‘Mask Layer 1’ etc.<\/li>\n<li>Zoom-out the timeline<\/li>\n<li>Drag the duplicated layer back 1 frame<\/li>\n<li>Zoom-in the timeline to see the frame in more detail<\/li>\n<li>Cut the frame ( \u00a0alt + [ \u00a0)<\/li>\n<li>Step forward one frame ( page down )<\/li>\n<li>Cut the frame again ( \u00a0alt + ] \u00a0)<\/li>\n<li>Step back one frame ( page up )<\/li>\n<li>Cut the frame a final time ( \u00a0alt + ] \u00a0)<\/li>\n<li>Hide ‘Mask Layer 1’ ( click the eyeball icon )<\/li>\n<li>Draw a circle mask onto the hidden ‘Mask Layer 1’<\/li>\n<li>Toggle the eye on \/ off to ensure the mask covers the bird<\/li>\n<li>Toggle the ‘Mask and Shape Visibility’ icon to see clearly view the masked area<\/li>\n<li>Highlight ‘Mask Layer 1’ and nudge the mask back once to compensate the frame movement ( back arrow key )<\/li>\n<li>Rinse and repeat for all affected frames.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"flex-video widescreen vimeo\">\n\t \t<video poster=\"\/\/cdn.4muladesign.com\/clients\/jb\/assets\/video\/2014.10.14_Debirding_720.poster.jpg\" controls><source src=\"\/\/cdn.4muladesign.com\/clients\/jb\/assets\/video\/2014.10.14_Debirding_720.mp4\" type=\"video\/mp4\"><source src=\"\/\/cdn.4muladesign.com\/clients\/jb\/assets\/video\/2014.10.14_Debirding_720.ogv\" type=\"video\/ogg\">Your browser does not support the <code>video<\/code> element.<\/video>\n\t <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Learn how to perfectly eliminate the scourge of birds and other objects from a timelapse sequence.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[32,33,11,14,15],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - 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