Options to deal with embedded timestamp

[Adjul Gardner]

Still working with that old VHS footage and am wondering what my options are.

About half the shots are timestamped:
http://www.teachingdrum.org/adjul/VHSTimestamp.jpg

The other half aren't. In my sneak preview, I just vertically-cropped the timestamps out. They are right in the shot, and cropping them out removed a lot of good picture from the frame, to the point where you're just seeing disembodied heads.

The timestamps have the potential to be distracting because it makes jumpcuts stick out more, and makes it more clear - if someone were paying attention - exactly how big of a jump I made.

First question: What was this guy thinking (I didn't film it)? Was the cam operator a total amateur, or were these things removable at some point?

My main question, what can I do? Here's what I see:
-Crop vertically and cut my losses
-Blur it out (so it's unreadable)
-Put some other sort of thing over it (don't really know what)
-Alternate between cropping/zooming and leaving the timestamp in so in jumpcutted shots you don't see the timestamp except for in one shot (so there's no reference to compare to in all the other shots)
-Leave them in and trust the the audience will look past it, or that it gives some sort of "authentic" edge to it.

The project is my own personal thing, and I'm not answering to any customer, so it's my choice.

Adjul

[Adjul Gardner]

Defocus has worked best so far among the blurs:

http://www.teachingdrum.org/adjul/Defocus.jpg

I just don't like the black outline, obviously. Can somebody point me to a technique that doesn't make that?

I've got two vid layers over each other on different tracks.
The top one is a positive mask of just the timestamp that's defocused.
The bottom one is negative masked on the timeline to remove it.

[Seth Bloombaum]

That is pretty awful. Hard to say if that was on the original tape, or picked up through some settings when the tape was played for digital capture... but if it's on the camera tape it's there to stay.

You really don't need to do any effect on the lower track - the defocused rectangle on the upper track is enough to cover what's in the lower track that includes the full video frame. Removing the lower track's mask might get rid of the outline.

If it doesn't, and you need to eliminate the outline on the upper track, you do have two methods in Vegas;
* Using the Cookie Cutter filter and Defocus or Blur, or,
* Using the Event pan/crop controls to cut a mask, and Defocus or Blur.
Either of those can be applied with the Defocus/Blur ahead of or behind the mask.

In either, you should be able to eliminate any borders.

[Roberto Diaz]

consider a simple crop to remove the timestamp. that is, scale the image so that the timestamp is just outside the visible frame. the red box in the attached image would be what you'd see in the final render. if the timestamp is always in the same spot,it's easiest to do this on in the Track Motion, otherwise you can do it on the Event Pan/Crop for each clip. this only works if the subject is always in the same part (center) of the shot.

[Juan Rios]

Outside of Vegas, and the Logoaway filter by Krzysztof Wojdon for VirtualDub? I think it is a very good filter.

[Mike Kujbida]

+1 for Logoaway.

virtualdub.org
Logoaway v3.0 by Krzysztof Wojdon