How to patch out a flaw
A patch covers a small area of the picture for the whole clip: a logo in a corner, a tear in a backdrop, a mark on a lens, a bad edge left by a crop. It is a still cover, sampled from one frame, so it works for things that do not move and the background behind them does not either.
Place a patch
- Find a frame where the area around the flaw looks the way you want it to look. The patch is sampled from this frame.
- Press P or tap Patch.
- Drag a box over the flaw. Four corner points appear; switch to 8 points to follow a shape that is not a rectangle, and drag the points.
- Pick a mode:
- Clone nearby copies pixels from an offset spot. Drag the second, dotted shape to the place the pixels should come from. Best for texture: a wall, grass, a floor.
- Blur into background blurs what is under the patch. Strength sets how much. Best for a logo on a flat or soft area.
- Solid colour fills the patch with one colour. Pick colour takes it from the picture. Best for sky, a plain wall, a black edge.
- Feather softens the edge. A few pixels is usually right; more for a blurred background, less for a sharp corner.
- Press Export. The patch is baked into the picture, so the export re-encodes.
Add more patches by dragging again. Select one by clicking it; Backspace removes it. The list above the controls names each patch.
What works and what does not
- Works: a locked-off camera, a static logo or watermark, a mark on the lens, a flaw in a backdrop, a dark corner.
- Does not work: anything that moves under the patch, a handheld camera, changing light. The patch is one frame, and once the background changes the patch stops matching.
For a moving flaw, crop it out instead, or trim around it.
Questions
Which frame is the patch taken from?
The one you were on when you drew it. Scrub to a clean frame first. A clip's patches are re-sampled from that same frame on every export, and the frame is stored in the state file.
Can I use the same patches on other clips?
Yes. Copy patches in the patch panel copies them, Paste patches puts them on another clip at the same position. Useful for a series of shots from one camera with the same logo.
Does patching lose quality?
The area under the patch is replaced. Everything else is re-encoded once at a high quality setting, like any edit that changes pixels.