Motion Blur

Hello,

I have made a timelapse on a construction site in a factory and I got a message from the client, that the workers don't want to be recognized in the video. Purposly I used a 2s shutter time to have people blurred as much as possible. But ... the workers were obviously standing still for longer times and when You go frame by frame, the workers can be recognized. If the video is playing, there is no chance of recognizing anyone, but they were obviously inspecting the video while stopping it.

I was thinking to apply some extra motion blur to it - I made a generator in Motion with the strongest motion blur settings it offers, but I didn't get blurred people, but multiplied and transparent instead. It is obvious that it just makes and average between the frames and if the people move very quickly in the timelapse, they become transparent and sometimes the same person remains there in several instances - only with less opacity, but still totally sharp.

So my question is, if there is any way of applying a strong motion blur (or other effect), which would really blur the image? Or, any kind of AI plug-in, which would blur the faces automatically?

Thanks!

Assuming it's a static time lapse... Save frame. Paste above timeline. Extend length as needed. Crop to area needing blur. Apply blur mask. Thirty seconds max to do this while futzing a solution in Motion likely an hour (for me it would be). Sure you'll be able to spot it because you know what was done and where to look but on a time lapse with all the other busyness going on I doubt anyone'll be able to pick up on the blur sleight of hand.

Consider this a generic answer as it all depends on the layout of the time lapse itself and a different approach without having to go to that enormous time suck that is (for me) Motion.

Thank You for the answer! Unfortunatelly this method can’t be used, as the workers move everywhere across the frame. And the timelapse was shot on two cameras from different angles.

VTC wrote:

Assuming it's a static time lapse... Save frame. Paste above timeline. Extend length as needed. Crop to area needing blur. Apply blur mask. Thirty seconds max to do this while futzing a solution in Motion likely an hour (for me it would be). Sure you'll be able to spot it because you know what was done and where to look but on a time lapse with all the other busyness going on I doubt anyone'll be able to pick up on the blur sleight of hand.

Consider this a generic answer as it all depends on the layout of the time lapse itself and a different approach without having to go to that enormous time suck that is (for me) Motion.

Gaussian blur is strong enough to render almost anything unrecognizable if you raise the blur boost high enough.

I suggest combining your blur effect of choice with FCPX's built-in tracking.  Drag and drop the blur effect directly to the viewer. In an ideal world, a bounding box will appear over the object you want to track. If and when that happens, that's your cue to drop the effect. Otherwise you'll have to manually conform the tracking mesh to the shape of the tracked object. See here for details.

Thanks for the answer - I understand that You want me to track every individual worker, but that is not possible, as there are let's say 20 workers and in the timelapse they move so quickly, that in You see one person in one or two frames and than it dissapears. They just change the positions too quickly and they are too many. And the second factor is the switching between two cameras. This would be laborious as blurring all faces manually frame by frame. 

realworldmedia wrote:

Gaussian blur is strong enough to render almost anything unrecognizable if you raise the blur boost high enough.

I suggest combining your blur effect of choice with FCPX's built-in tracking. Drag and drop the blur effect directly to the viewer. In an ideal world, a bounding box will appear over the object you want to track. If and when that happens, that's your cue to drop the effect. Otherwise you'll have to manually conform the tracking mesh to the shape of the tracked object. See here for details.

I don't know of an easy solution to blurring things that move quickly across the frame and only appear for a frame or two, but switching between cameras is not an issue.

If you are switching between cameras, it should probably be happening in a multicam clip. There, you would apply the blur effect to each of the underlying camera angles, not to the final multicam edit.

If you are new to FCPX's multicam workflow, it's worth the time to become familiar .

Without having seen the video, it seems that it would be tough to get even something using machine learning to be able to auto-identify and track faces due to the motion blur.

If individuals stayed sharp throughout the video and were trackable then there are some machine learning based tools that could auto-mask and blur each person's face. There's a plugin called Blace for After Effects and Premiere Pro that does auto face detection, blurring, and tracking.

Blace

If a reshoot isn't possible, you may have to just fix things frame by frame, as needed. Something like Blace may still be helpful. Something like Blace may be able to work only on frames where it can identify faces, which may be all you need.

Please let us know how things work out. If you could post a short "after" clip that would be cool. Thanks.

Cheers.

This is exactly what I have been looking for. It's a pitty on only works with After Effects, because I have no experiences using it, but I may give it a try. I hope something like this will come up for FCPX & Motion.

Maybe I will ask the Blace developer, if they could make it for FCPX, although it would take a lot of time to do it.

Cheers!

DaveM wrote:

Without having seen the video, it seems that it would be tough to get even something using machine learning to be able to auto-identify and track faces due to the motion blur.

If individuals stayed sharp throughout the video and were trackable then there are some machine learning based tools that could auto-mask and blur each person's face. There's a plugin called Blace for After Effects and Premiere Pro that does auto face detection, blurring, and tracking.

Blace

If a reshoot isn't possible, you may have to just fix things frame by frame, as needed. Something like Blace may still be helpful. Something like Blace may be able to work only on frames where it can identify faces, which may be all you need.

Please let us know how things work out. If you could post a short "after" clip that would be cool. Thanks.

Cheers.