Advanced Dirt Removal
Free, open-source OFX plugin that removes dust and dirt from film scans, for
DaVinci Resolve, Nuke and other OFX hosts. I made it for archives, educators
and small restoration projects.
Advanced Dirt Removal is an OFX plugin with its own temporal repair engine. It
looks for dirt, dust and sparkle that appear in one frame only, and fills those
spots from the frames before and after, with motion compensation. So it masks
the damage using picture that is really there in the neighbouring frames. It
doesn't invent detail, and it can't fix damage that stays in the same place for
several frames, like a long scratch or a hair in the gate.
It runs on the GPU (Apple Metal, NVIDIA CUDA, and OpenCL for AMD, Intel and
NVIDIA) and falls back to the CPU. In my tests every backend gave the same result, so a
render on one machine matched a render on another.
What's in it
One effect does everything:
- Input encoding: Video, or Cineon log for film scans. Cineon is cleaned in
linear, and pixels it doesn't touch keep their exact log values.
- Recovery mask: paint where you want the original back.
- Auto recovery: a small built-in model looks at every repaired spot and
gives back the ones that look like real picture detail. You can paint on top
of its matte to add or remove areas.
- Spanish dirt removal: manual frame-by-frame dust cleaning. Put a small
mask over a speck and only that spot is repaired.
- Views: Restored, Red difference (every repair in red on a grey picture),
True difference and the auto-recovery matte.
What it does
Clips from 35mm trailer scans at 2K. Each links to the full-quality MP4.
Cleanup. The dust and specks go; the picture and its grain stay.
Full-quality video
Difference view. Every repair in red.
MP4, 7 s
Spanish dirt removal. Manual frame-by-frame dust cleaning, only where you
mask.
MP4, 10 s
Auto recovery. Off and on. Moving highlights are given back; the dirt stays
repaired.
MP4, 10.5 s
Sources: SOURCES.md.
> New in 2.0. Version 1.x was a Fusion macro around DaVinci Resolve's
> built-in dirt removal. 2.0 is a stand-alone plugin with its own engine, for
> Resolve, Nuke and other OFX hosts on macOS, Windows and Linux. What changed:
> CHANGELOG.md. What has been tested: docs/TESTED.md.
Install
The installers are unsigned. I don't pay for an Apple Developer ID or a Windows
code-signing certificate, so the first time you'll get a warning. This is
how to get past it. Full details, manual installation and uninstalling are in
docs/INSTALL.md.
macOS. Download AdvancedDirtRemoval--macos.zip from the
releases page,
unzip it and open the .pkg. macOS will block it the first time:
- macOS 15 and later: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
- macOS 14 and earlier: right-click the
.pkg → Open → Open.
Or remove the quarantine flag in Terminal and open it normally:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/AdvancedDirtRemoval-.pkg
Windows. Download AdvancedDirtRemoval-Setup-.exe (or the
-win64.zip and extract it) and run it. When SmartScreen says "Windows
protected your PC", click More info → Run anyway. It needs
administrator rights for the shared OFX folder.
Or with winget: winget install FabioColor.AdvancedDirtRemoval.
Linux.
tar -xzf AdvancedDirtRemoval--linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd AdvancedDirtRemoval--linux-x86_64
sudo ./install.sh
Restart your host afterwards. The plugin goes in the standard OFX folder:
/Library/OFX/Plugins (macOS), C:\Program Files\Common Files\OFX\Plugins
(Windows) or /usr/OFX/Plugins (Linux).
Quick start
- Add Advanced Dirt Removal (group FabioColor) to the complete,
unedited shot:
- DaVinci Resolve: Fusion page → Add Tool → OpenFX → FabioColor.
- Nuke: Tab → "Advanced Dirt Removal".
- Set Input encoding to Cineon log for Cineon scans. Leave Video
otherwise.
- Check what it did with View: Red difference.
- Where it repaired real detail, press Calculate recovery for auto
recovery, and/or connect a paint or mask tool to the Mask input and paint
the original back.
The user guide goes through every control, the recovery
workflow and the views.
The plugin in DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.1 on macOS, Fusion page, with the
Breathless trailer: the effect's output on the left, its controls on the
right.
Red difference in Resolve.
The screenshots are from macOS. Resolve and the plugin's controls look the
same on Windows and Linux.
| Control group | Controls |
|---|
| Top | Input encoding, View |
| Detection | Analyse, Remove dark spots, Remove light spots, Sensitivity, Extra sensitivity, Analysis detail, Limit spot size, Largest spot, Extended-range input |
| Processing | Repair amount, Blend repairs, Blend amount |
| Safeguards | Motion guard, Shot changes, Shot-change guard, Flash guard |
| Recovery | Mask (Recovery / Spanish dirt removal), Calculate recovery, Auto recovery, Confidence, Matte folder |
| View options | Difference threshold, Red difference intensity, Red highlight opacity, Grayscale background, Difference gain |
Limits
- Very fast motion can look like dirt. Raise Motion guard, use auto
recovery and paint back what is left. Always review moving shots.
- Damage that stays for more than a frame or two isn't touched.
- Interlaced material isn't supported. Deinterlace first.
- Tested hosts are DaVinci Resolve Studio 21 (Fusion page) and Nuke 17 on
macOS, Windows and Linux. The Resolve Color and Edit pages, other OFX hosts
and Intel Macs haven't been tested yet. Premiere Pro and After Effects don't
load OFX plugins, so they aren't supported yet.
The plugin keeps a diagnostic log (backend, device, timing, errors). Its
location is in the user guide.
Please attach it when you report a problem.
Build from source
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DADR_WITH_OPENCL=ON
cmake --build build --config Release --parallel
python3 tools/check_release.py build
Options for CUDA, OpenCL and the CPU fallback are in docs/BUILD.md.
There is no CI service. Releases are built and checked locally.
Support
ADR is free and open source, and I make it in my own time. If it saves you work, you can support it on Ko-fi. Contributions, bug reports and test footage are welcome too.
Results from hosts, systems and GPUs I haven't tested are very welcome.
Licence
The code and the model weights have different licences.
- Source code: MIT. See LICENSE.
- Auto-recovery model weights (
ofx/resources/recovery-model.bin, also
installed inside the plugin): CC BY-NC 4.0, for non-commercial use only. See
WEIGHTS_LICENSE. The weights are versioned per release and
each release also attaches them as a separate file.
- OpenFX headers in
ofx/vendor/openfx: BSD 3-Clause, see
ofx/vendor/openfx/LICENSE.md.
For commercial use of the weights, contact me through
github.com/fabiocolor.
You can reach me through GitHub or the
Discussions page.
Film restoration tools for archives, educators and preservation projects
