Blurring the background in a interview

[Christopher6206]

Hey Everyone, I just want to know if there is a way for me to blur the background in an already shot video. Normally it's done in camera by using a shallow depth of field. But that's not the case with what I'm working with. This is an interview with 2 people in the shot. Using "blurred spot" effect in many areas of the screen works but that has its limits. Any third party software out there that could do it? Or another way using the cassie that I'm not thinking of? Thanks for any response.

[CKNewman]

That's an interesting challenge! I don't know how far apart the subjects are; if they're sitting in chairs wearing lavaliere microphones or standing close sharing a mic like a sports interview on the edge of a playing field. The effects I would start playing with would be Blue Box World, Spice Rack, and Filter Pack. You might experiment with making a copy of the interview and applying blur, reducing chroma, reducing detail, reducing luma, etc. to the entire scene. Use that scene as the background and then try using a PIP effect with a blurred border in Blue Box World. There may be something in BBW that would allow you to use BBW by itself. I wish I could give you more specific pointers but it's been a long time since I've used these programs on my Smart Edit machine.

[Christopher6206]

Thanks, Craig. I looked at Blu Box world and couldn't figure out how it could help me. I've only ever used it with green screen shooting and it's been awhile since I've done even that. Your other suggestions would dilute the chroma, luminence etc on the subjects as well so I didn't think that would work. But one thing I hadn't considered was "Circle Blur". That combined with "Blurred Spot" is giving me better results than anything I've tried so far. I'm only using 1 Blurred Spot now where as before I had 15 of them. So thank you for that suggestion. The bottom of the subjects will be blurred but at least their face is still in focus, even if they move their head around. And to answer your question, the 2 subjects are sitting side by side, in 2 chairs, both mic'ed and sitting in their living room. I'm still open to more suggestions if anyone has any.

Note: I've never used "Circle Blur" before but I have to say the "Preview" and when using it in "Full Size" mode is terrible. Not even close to the actual finished render. So some guessing work going on here.

[CKNewman]

I think I'm picturing PIP Studio. You would use the scene with the muted colors, etc. as the background, and insert the original over it, using a soft border. Remember that PIP Studio gives you a number shapes for borders.

[Christopher6206]

I tried the PIP suggestion as well. It worked a little better and worse than the "Circle Blur" option. Circle Blur left some blurring on the side of one of the subjects face while PIP effect blurred out their hand and arms near the bottom of the screen. We're going with the CIrcle Blur effect (with one "Blurred spot" in between them" as his head does move around so the blurring on his face isn't noticeable all the time. Thanks for your help Craig.

[LouBruno]

Can not do if there is movement. Only CB paint did this using rotoscoping......even if using various masks, the masks will not follow the talent As the talent moves outside the mask.

[mhuebmer]

Without seeing the scene it's hard to tell how to solve this. With CBPaint nearly everything was possible, depending on the invested time.

With Bogart, I would

• blur the scene
• use the "Hide Area" of the Object-Tracer to "Color" a green(or blue) Ellipse, hiding the moving object
• and then combine the original scene and the blurred scene (with the green, covered object) with BlueBox World
• Where the green ellipse is moving with the object, the original scene can be seen, the rest is blurred.

Since you can use the Object-Tracer to "hide" (cover) multiple parts of the scene, by using it again on the new generated scenes, also more complex objects can be colored and used with BlueBox World.

A quick&dirty experiment can be seen here: https://youtu.be/BD8965C5bBs

[JBrooks]

Nice Effect......

[Christopher6206]

Thanks Joel I'll keep that in mind for next time.