Problems with Clone Stamp effect on video footage (CC 2017)

[UltraUber]

Hello.

I have a footage of an owl sitting on a tree branch and turning its head. I rotoscoped the head and looped it, so it looks like the owl is continuously rotating its head 360 degrees around its neck.

The second part of the project is to loop the background as well (because I rotoscoped only the head). So I took the original footage (16 frames long) with the owl and using the Clone Stamp Tool "erased" owl's head and some tree branches, so that the area around the head became white (see printscreen below). When I used the Clone Stamp Tool I made sure that CTI was at 00:00:00 and I used it at only this point. Then I duplicated the Clone Stamped footage, Time-reversed it, and when I was previewing the time reversed footage, some owl's body parts appeared on the area which was supposed to be white (Clone stamped).

After some head-scratching and various pre-composing attempts I was forced to Clone stamp the time-reversed footage separately. So, with 1 normal and 1 time-reversed footage (with clone stamp applied separately), I got 1 clean instance of rotating owl's head. But I want to loop it like 5 or 10 times. To do this, I duplicated the normal and time-reversed layers and then offset them in the timeline.

However, when the CTI entered the duplicated layers' area, again some owl's body parts and tree branches appeared on the area where it was supposed to be just white. Why this happens and how to avoid it?

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

The project would be easier if you used more layers. It looks to me like you are trying to do too many things on a single layer.

If the camera is locked I would export a frame to a PSD and then remove the background in Photoshop. Then drop this layer behind the rotoscope owl head.

If the camera is moving or there are other things that are moving in the frame I would duplicate the layer, maybe even Stabilize Motion so the branches are not moving, then use the clone tools to completely remove the owl's head. And then put that pre-comp below the rotoscoped head.

Some more workflow and shot details would really help us point you to a more efficient solution.

One other proint. The clone tool is kind of difficult to use and requires quite a bit of study to use properly. I would suggest that you spend some time with the help files or community resources by typing Clone tool in the search help field at the top right corner of AE. You'll find some very useful information.

[UltraUber]

Thank you, Rick.

After a few of hours, being away from my project, I realized that I simply needed to pre-render those 2 good layers (normal and time-inversed), then import the new video file into the project and duplicate it as many times as I want.

But yes, I will study the Clone Stamp Tool a lot more, it really works in a mysterious way.