Anyone got any tips for dealing with hot pixels?

[stormcab]

I have a Canon 5D MKII, and had returned it to the shop 3 times up until February this year because they all had hot pixels. It was the fourth one that had none, up until 2 weeks ago, when I discovered, on holiday! that a red one had appeared just off centre. The shop will not replace it any more, instead they want to send it to Canon for repair, which can & does take up to 3 weeks.

As I don't want to be sending it off twice a year for the rest of its life, especially out of warranty, I would like a solution to dealing with them using, at the moment X3.

Any body got a good method?

Cheers.

[Ron P.]

That's one expensive camera to be having that problem repeatedly. If you're using it in a professional setting, I would be looking at replacing it, and not with another Canon, especially if this was a problem from the start.

Hot pixels are easy to fix for still images, for video it ranges from extremely difficult to next to impossible. You're situation fits closer to the next to impossible, since the hot-pixel is located in the main part of the "image". The easiest way is to mask or cover it with something else. If the hot-pixel was located somewhere in the lower-third of the screen, you could slap a Lower-third graphic over it.

There's also the method using Roto-scoping, where you basically paint over, clone each frame. I'm not sure how many roto-scoping programs are around, or how affordable they are. Ulead used to provide one with MediaStudio Pro, up to version 7, then provided a separate utility program called Video Graphics Lab for a short time after Corel had sucked up Ulead, for version 8.

VS does have the ability to create Image Sequence Files (UIS). Go to Share>Create Video File>Custom. Then in the Files of type drop-down menu, select Ulead Image Sequence. It will then create an image for each frame of your video file, and a *.uis file. You then open each one of those images in the photo editor of your choice, making the correction to the hot-pixel area, and then saving it.

Once the correction is done, open VS, choose import video, then locate the *.UIS file, which will be inserted as a video file. I've only done this a couple of times, because it is a very, very time consuming method. Make sure you create a dedicated folder, depending on the duration of your video clip, you will have hundreds, if not a thousand or more images. Just do the math, NTSC video= 29.97 Frames per second, PAL= 25 frames per second.