Dead Pixel Fixer

Dead Pixel Fixer is designed first for dead or stuck sensor pixels: black or white points that remain fixed in the image throughout a clip. Blackmagic explicitly contrasts it with Dust Buster, which is intended for transient dirt and dust that lasts only a frame or two.

The node does not automatically discover defects. Enable the OFX onscreen controls in the Viewer and place patches manually. You can create multiple patches and select each one independently; each patch can carry its own repair settings.

Draw Rect and Draw Ellipse create arbitrary-size patches. Place Patch is meant for very small details such as dead pixels; selecting it reveals New Patch Size so the next small patch can be sized before placement.

Patch Type has three modes. Spatial fills from pixels around the patch. Clone copies a selected sample region. Blend Clone works like Clone but blends the copied region into the target more softly. Clone Sticks to Mouse can move the workflow directly into donor-region placement after drawing the target.

Fill Method belongs to Spatial only and contains Grid, Horizontal, Vertical, Patchy and Smooth. Grid samples around the patch and blurs inward on both axes; Horizontal uses left/right samples; Vertical uses top/bottom samples; Patchy creates a softer non-uniform fill from surrounding samples; Smooth uses Gaussian blur. Mute is not a Fill Method.

Patch Options belong to the selected patch. Variability is Spatial-only and makes the fill less uniform, Soft Edges feathers the boundary, Size Adjust changes an already-created patch, and Mute independently turns that patch on/off and can be keyframed.

Advanced Controls mainly govern interaction and coordinate behavior. New Patches Stay Selected keeps the newly created patch active. UI Line Thickness, Show Patches and Hide During Interaction affect Viewer overlays rather than rendered repair quality.

Patches Stick to offers Source and Scene. The Resolve 21 manual describes Source in relation to source-image/stabilization behavior, while Scene is described for a tracked moving subject through the FX Tracker. Both choices are visible in the captured Fusion Inspector, but exact Scene/FX Tracker behavior in a particular Fusion-host workflow remains a live target-build verification boundary.

Output Mode is diagnostic as well as final: Patched Result is the repaired image, Patch Locations is a white-on-black map of placed patches, Differences shows the change against the original, and Difference Magnitude exaggerates that difference for inspection.

Because a fixed sensor defect is tied to image coordinates, placing the repair before heavy resizing or warping is often easier to reason about. Stabilization/tracking still has to be checked together with Patches Stick to rather than assumed.

Dead Pixel Fixer is documented in Resolve 21 as Studio Version Only. Current captured screenshots verify the Fusion Inspector controls; this package does not claim live Resolve 21/21.1 execution, host-specific physical sockets beyond the primary Image path, or fully characterized Scene tracking.

Do not confuse target-patch geometry with the repair algorithm. Rect/Ellipse/Place Patch define where; Spatial/Clone/Blend Clone define how the selected area is rebuilt.

Place Patch is convenient because it creates a small target quickly, not because it uses a different repair engine. After placement the patch still uses the normal Patch Type and Patch Options.

New Patch Size applies to future Place Patch targets. Size Adjust changes an already-created selected patch. They belong to different stages of the workflow.

Spatial needs no separate donor and derives replacement pixels from the surrounding image, making it the logical first test for isolated hot/dead pixels and tiny blemishes.

Grid is especially effective on tiny defects but can reveal grid-like structure on a larger target. Increasing Soft Edges is not always the right response when Fill Method is the real issue.

Horizontal and Vertical are useful on directional local structure such as lines, borders or bands. Choose direction from image structure rather than patch shape.

Patchy and Smooth both soften the repair through different strategies: Patchy blends surrounding samples into a non-uniform fill while Smooth uses Gaussian blur.

Clone and Blend Clone require a donor region, but that donor is internal OFX geometry rather than a second Flow image input.

Blend Clone can soften donor integration, but it does not rescue a donor with the wrong texture, grain, lighting or motion.

A donor should match detail scale, noise/grain, lighting and motion as well as color. Coordinate proximity alone is not sufficient.

Mute acts on the currently selected patch and can be animated. It can gate a blemish over part of a shot but does not turn Dead Pixel Fixer into a temporal dirt detector.

Multiple patches inside one node are independent elements. Patch Type, Fill Method, softness, size and Mute state can differ per patch.

Patches Stick to = Source is the natural baseline for a sensor defect tied to source coordinates. Use Scene only when host/tracker behavior is confirmed in the target build.

Ordering relative to stabilization matters because a fixed sensor pixel and a moving scene object imply different coordinate assumptions.

A strong Resize, Warp or Transform before repair can spread a one-pixel defect across several interpolated pixels. It is often easier to repair the source defect earlier.

Patch Locations, Differences and Difference Magnitude are diagnostic image representations on the same Output, not separate mask ports.

Difference Magnitude is useful for exposing an oversized repair footprint that may be nearly invisible in Patched Result.

Production QC must end with Output Mode returned to Patched Result and full-shot playback at normal speed.

Judge Clone over time: a still frame can look perfect while playback reveals frozen grain or a repeated texture pattern.

Do not promise universal Alpha/aux-channel behavior for the OFX host path without a target-build test; this article locks down image-to-image topology.

Show Patches, Hide During Interaction and UI Line Thickness are Viewer overlay controls only and do not alter the render.

A preset for a recurring sensor defect is reasonable only when source format, crop and coordinate assumptions remain compatible.