Logo removal by using 2 sources

[pfxz]

So I am trying to remove the logo from this clip that I have. Luckily I have two different captures, each one with a logo in a different place.

I am trying to remove it by using Mask/Layer, extracting a small part of the logo-less part of one video and stamping it on the other. This of course won't blend in perfectly, which gives me a few ideas:

1. Use a mask that's not rectangular in shape. With an irregular shape it's harder to spot the difference.

2. Blend the surrounding area where I performed this "surgery" with Mask/Layer

3. Add noise/blur to the surrounding area, although this won't look very good because it's a 720p video.

I am sure this has been attempt before, does anyone have ideas/pointers or links to threads discussing this?

[ajk]

I don't have a thread to point to, but I have done this in the past. Those were actually music videos recorded from different channels/different times so the logos and song names and such would be in different areas.

Using masks with some blur in them worked pretty much perfectly. Basically the workflow was to copy an image of one video in VirtualDub; paste it in a paint program and mark the logo area in black and rest in white, then give it a slight gaussian blur to feather in the edges. If the captures are digital and exactly the same, blurring is not necessarily needed.

If the captures differ in resolution, you need to match the geometry of the videos as well as possible beforehand. Also matching the colours with ColourLike or similar will be useful with analog captures. Took quite a bunch of crop/resize calls in some cases, but almost everything can be made to line up.

Then it's just a bunch of trim/mask calls in avisynth to piece it all together. Depending on the source material the end result can be very good even if one of the videos is of poorer quality (HD/SD).

If you have sample clips I could have a look.

[zee944]

Once the videos are in position, it's easy to do.
You can blur the mask with Blur(), or even use GaussResize for that, or mt_edge("inflate") or mt_edge("deflate"), then use Overlay to put the two videos onto each other.

But first of all, you have to think about if it's really worth the time. The footage you're fixing may be available on DVD. These things are often much more time consuming than predicted before and just doesn't worth it.