User's Manual
Dust Buster
In the ‘ResolveFX Revival’ category of DaVinci Resolve Studio, this plugin is also designed to
eliminate dust, dirt, and other imperfections and artifacts from clips. However, it does so only
with user guidance for clips where the ‘automatic dirt removal’ plugin yields unsatisfactory
results. This guidance consists of moving through the clip frame by frame and drawing boxes
around imperfections you want to eliminate. Once you’ve drawn a box, the offending
imperfection is eliminated in the most seamless way possible. This works well for dirt and dust,
but it also works for really big stains and blotches, as seen below.
(Left) Drawing a box around dirt in the original image, (Right) Result in the ‘dust buster’ plugin
This plugin works similarly to, but supersedes the legacy ‘dust removal’ feature, which only
worked on select image sequence formats, and wrote new media files on disk. The ‘dust buster’
plugin works on any format of movie clip, and works non-destructively, storing all image repairs
within the plugin without creating new media. Best of all, this plugin is able to perform with only
three controls.
Mode: Selects how imperfections within the bounding box you draw are fixed.
Bydefault, ‘auto’ just takes care things, however, if you’re not satisfied with the result,
youcan undo, and choose a different method.
ͽ Auto: The default method. When you draw a bounding box, the two frames prior
to and the two frames after the current clip will be analyzed and compared to the
current image. The best of these five frames will be drawn upon to remove the
imperfection in the current frame. Images two frames away are prioritized since that
will avoid the appearance of frozen grain, but only if they’re suitable.
ͽ Prev/Next Frame: If you draw a bounding box from left to right, the next frame will be
drawn upon to remove the imperfection. If you draw a bounding box from right to left,
the previous frame will be used.
ͽ Prev-1/Next+1 Frame: If you draw a bounding box from left to right, the image
two frames forward will be drawn upon to remove the imperfection. If you draw a
bounding box from right to left, the image two frames back will be used.
ͽ Spatial Fill: In cases where the other two modes yield unsatisfactory results, such as
when the underlying image has fast or blurred motion, this mode uses surrounding
information in the current frame to remove the imperfection.
Show Patches: Off by default. Turning this checkbox on lets you see every bounding
box you’ve drawn to eliminate imperfections. While the patches are shown, you can
Shift-click to select individual patches, group select patches by Command-dragging a
bounding box, and delete unwanted patches individually by Option-clicking them.
Reset Frame: Resets all of the bounding boxes drawn on the current frame, so you can
start over.
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