Using The New Defocus Background Tool | Davinci Resolve 19

over the weekend Blackmagic finally introduced The Long awaited diviny resolve 19 although this is the beta version at the moment and with it came a variety of new features tools and updates many of which leaned into the AI neural engine there is one feature in particular which caught my attention which is the ability to defocus a background adding fake shallow depth field is one of the more harder visual elements to convincingly create due to the number of characteristics that come from a real defocused background now Adobe Lightroom did introduce something similar last year and the results are fairly decent not entirely convincing but pretty parsable but of course it is vastly different in adding a defocused background to a photo vers a video well today let's have a look at just how great this is because I did notice in the resolve update when they were display in the defocus background there were parts of the hair which didn't follow through uh that precise so I've downloaded a variety of clips from the fedo library under different circumstances with different backgrounds and we're going to see how far we can push this tool and see if we can finally create a convincing shallow depth field without using a fast prime lens okay we're inside of the Vinci resolve 19 beta I have these clips from the fedo library we have this bike mechanic here he's very happy because he's just built a new prototype motorcycle little does he know that that motorbike is under an NDA and he should not be shown it so now we need to save him from a lawsuit so we're going to go to the color page and unfortunately it's not as simple is just you know dragging the effect onto a node and job done it does require a little bit of a setup now there are two ways in which we can do this we can either use an external key node structure or just add it all onto the one node um I would recommend in not doing it like this so if we go to the magic mask person and we make sure we've got an additive qualifier the toggle mask overlay is on going to draw a nice stroke over his body add the defocus background you can do Allin one node it's okay but the issue is it gets a little bit crowded on screen especially if you have like a number of Different Strokes over here and you're trying to figure out what's going on make some adjustments and you can't because it looks like a three-year-old has taken their crayons to the screen so what I would recommend in doing is instead creating a node structure like this and we're going to create an external key so whatever is masked out in node 2 does not uh is not affected by the adjustments in node 3 so to do this we're going to take the connection point from node one's green square square to the green triangle on node 3 and then take the connection point from the blue square on node two to the triangle blue triangle on node 3 has a mouth fill and that creates as a resolve just hold us an external key so now we can go back to our magic mask panel change it to Magic mask person additive uh stroke tog mask overlay is on and just draw a stroke over the subject unlik compositing of days gone by we don't have to uh draw around him it does a pretty good job though I can see that the ear here is not being caught properly as well as the neck a little bit of the Shir so I'm going to change this from quality uh faster to better and there we go oh his hand for some reason has not been masked so just draw another stroke over that and analyze forward and backwards and just keep an eye out for any areas that do not get masked correctly let's go through this yep there we go look at that on the bike cylinder I have no idea why that's being caught up in The Mask this is the beta of resolve so there are bugs to be expected something like this does happen you just take the subtractive stroke bring it over the area and analyze forward and backwards again and I think looking at this as it does it's did I just see another jol of red mask no I think we're okay we'll soon see anyway once we we had the the defocus effect so with with that sorted I might just add the tiniest bit of blur to sort of take away those sharp edges that is looking like a good mask even his hair um spiky hairstyle has been caught up in it very good go to node three we're going to add the defocus background oh let's turn off that first and press play okay that is looking pretty decent do I have any critiques of it at the moment not yet so let's increase the blur attach okay so it looks like we are having a little bit of ghosting around his shoulder here and perhaps the mask is not as close as we want it to so we will just go back into the magic mask and now start to refine it so we can get rid of that I think it's going to be a case of cleaning the white cleaning the blacks I can never remember which one it is this is looking decent maybe let to do noise it there we go that's much better again we are still getting some of the ghost in like around the shirt by here but I think we're going to take this as a win if this was a social video I don't think anyone's going to be paying to that sort of stuff in the first place and and for what it is we're defocusing the background I think it's done a fairly good job it's not the same is using a prime lens with uh a very shallow depth of field but it's done a pretty good job of dropping that out of focus and I think if you're at the stage where you're going to have to defocus the background on a video clip like this I'm sure the the ghosting around the Shir is the least of your concerns however of course we do have to stay that is present okay so for the second clip uh we have this model um I believe she's holding bicycle helmet skateboard helmet it looks like and um outside of this being a a clip that has a very distinctive background which our director once blurred out because those Mosaic tiles are too distracting I've been a little bit malicious in choosing this clip because I know that this flow in here of these single strands in the wind are a compositor nightmare um on a green screen this is going to cause Havoc likewise I'm not too sure the blur effect is going to hold up that well with this so let's give it a go I've already gone through the process of doing the magic mask as you know to do that now let's add defocus background to the node and tell you what let's change this to better maybe give it a little bit of a blur as well clean some of the blacks and the noise so it's done a decent job what I thought it might have done is if you if we have a look at the hair strands by here we can see that these seep through you know we're seeing the background through these hair strands I thought it was going to do that on all of this perhaps it's because I've got the do noise activated if I turn that down no it's not getting caught up in it that's pretty cool I thought the background was going to be a little bit more pronounced through the hair so again I think if this was a social video it's pretty passable of course what we do have is while the defocus tool has not been caught up in the middle all around her hair by here like it has done over this section which I thought was going to be the case it's just blurred out the hair which isn't ideal and it kind of gives us that artificial bluring effect uh you know like an iPhone portrait mode so it's okay it's done a it's done a fairly decent job it's even getting the Gap through the hand which is pretty decent but you know if you wanted to pixel peep there are areas here where we can spot it through the hand that is in Focus out of focus and so forth pretty good not as great as the car mechanic who doesn't have flowing hair okay so for our third example again I've sort of being a little bit nasty to the beta of resolve I really wanted to sort of push this defocused background effect to a quite an extreme and we have these two business operatives in a in the park making a deal un fortunately we did not get the location release for that building in the background and the producer wants us to drop this shot out of focus so I've already created my mask I think I might just go into it and blow out a touch and maybe add a little little bit of D noise but it's done a fairly good job so we're going to go to our third node our defocus back around again and this time we're going to increase the blur significant amount to ensure that the background is out of focus and with this shot in particular there's a lot of hand movement between both parties so let's have a look at how this looks so again it's pretty decent I think the translucent material here is causing a little bit of an issue I think resolve is an enable to sort of uh manage the the soft edge of the material it's sort of acting a little bit like diffusion same with the nose but you know if this was a quick shot again for social media or something of the likes uh like a web ad possibly pass and I think if we added more refinement within our magic mask or perhaps within the adjust mask properties in the um defocus background tool itself we could potentially get a better mask pill but I think overall it's just about passable I think the type of shots that are going to really stand out are the ones like the Cal mechanic where there's little to no movement there's no flow in here there's no soft material um but outside of that it's pretty decent I do think quite like most AI tools this is going to get better all right guys I've been Lewis with fivo the results that we saw today they were somewhat mixed of course we do have to remember that the software is in the beta version and Blackmagic are incredibly Stellar at updating their software as we know so this is only going to get better as we have seen with a number of AI tools but at the moment you are going to have to require your footage to be in in a very specific situation but at the moment I would say that you need to ensure that your media has been composed in a very specific manner if you do intend to later uh defocus the background with the likes of making sure that your subject is not wearing similar colors as the background there's no transparent material movement isn't that crazy and of course that there's no flow in here with that there's definitely a few situations that I think I could use this such as is this tutorial sequence because I am filming on an F4 lens and sometimes that background is not as much out of focus as I would like it to be right I've been LS and I'll catch you guys next week

Channel: Videvo

Views: 2,338

Keywords: davinci resolve 19, defocus background node, resolve 19, davinci 19, defocus bg node, add depth of field resolve, resolve depth of field, videvo, lewis mcgregor

Id: wDDTtFa--vk

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024