Match Rack Focus

Designed to analyze the animating focus values of a plate.  Simply provide a stabilized input, the frame that's most in focus, and the frame that's the most out of focus.

Instructions:

• First, run the analysis. (It's strongly recommended to mask out the defocusing area. Denoising and stabilizing the footage also helps.)

• Scrub through and find the sharpest frame you can, then hit USE CURRENT FRAME under FOCUSED FRAME.

• Likewise, find the most defocused frame you can, and hit USE CURRENT FRAME under DEFOCUSED FRAME.

• MULTIPLY and LIFT are supplied for user control. LIFT should be increased if your plate is never fully in focus. MULTIPLY will scale the overall effect.

• Hitting BAKE will take the resulting curve and bake it to keyframes. This animation is then applied to a newly created Defocus node. From here, the curve can be tweaked as desired.

(Note: After analysis, this node output operates like a normal defocus. Connect me to your element to preview the effect before baking.)

Known Caveats:

• Results may be inaccurate if mask changes in shape and size throughout shot.

• FG occluding objects will probably create spikes in the analysis. Delete these keyframes once you bake the curve and let it interpolate this section.

• Strong motion blur will skew results, requires manual finesse of resulting curve.

Comments? Questions? Feel free to reach out!
// Tyler Lockard // 2014 // tylerlockard.com //