DustBuster

DustBuster is a Resolve FX Revival restoration effect designed primarily for transient specks, tape hits, and short dirt events. Use Dead Pixel Fixer for defects persisting throughout a clip, or Automatic Dirt Removal as a broad first pass. Resolve FX availability can depend on DaVinci Resolve Studio and the installed build.

The actual Controls capture shows four modified-frame navigation buttons, Draw Rect, Draw Ellipse, Place Patch, Show Patches, and Reset Frame. You create patches in the Viewer. Adjusting an Inspector slider alone does not identify which pixels need repair.

Draw the smallest region that fully covers the blemish. Ellipses suit individual specks; narrow rectangles suit scratches. Place Patch is optimized for tiny point repairs. New Patch Size exists conditionally when Place Patch is selected, as documented by Blackmagic; it is not visible in the supplied screenshot.

The official Auto mode compares the current image against two frames before and two frames after it, selecting a suitable clean source. Two-frame-offset images are preferred where they match well to avoid frozen film grain. Auto is temporal sampling, not a promise of unrestricted semantic inpainting.

For +/-1 Frame and +/-2 Frames, drag direction matters for rectangles and ellipses: left-to-right selects a future frame (+1/+2); right-to-left selects a past frame (−1/−2). If the source is dirty or subject motion is significant, expect temporal ghosting. Direction selection with point-based Place Patch remains a live-verification item.

Spatial fills from the same frame. Fill Method and Variability apply to Spatial: Grid samples horizontally and vertically; Horizontal from left/right; Vertical from top/bottom; Patchy blends uneven surrounding patches; Smooth applies a Gaussian-blur-like fill.

Clone uses a second Viewer interaction to select a source region in the image, while Blend Clone softly integrates that sampled area. Blend Clone is a distinct repair method, not a numeric blend-strength slider. Position the sample over matching lighting, grain, and texture.

Patch Options are applied to the selected repair: Soft Edges feathers boundaries, Size Adjust changes the region, Mute bypasses an individual patch, and Delete Patch removes it. Variability affects Spatial repairs. Grey-looking fields in the captured Auto/no-selection state do not establish that they are permanently unavailable.

Advanced Controls govern interaction: Clone Sticks to Mouse jumps straight to positioning the source patch, New Patches Stay Selected keeps the last patch selected, and UI Line Thickness changes the Viewer overlay only. These are not additional restoration kernels.

The Output Mode list displays Patched Result, Patch Locations, Differences, and Difference Magnitude. The latter modes are diagnostics in the manual, but their entries appear grey in the supplied screenshot. Do not promise those menu items can be selected on the target machine; use A/B bypass when they are unavailable.

The Settings tab is closed in the source screenshots, and no Node Editor port capture was supplied. Exact Settings contents, a physical optional Effect Mask socket, and runtime mask behavior remain unverified here, even though the existing article contract describes a standard blue mask.

For temporal repair, inspect neighboring frames, clean-frame eligibility, motion, grain, and edge integrity. A structurally valid tutorial graph does not demonstrate good native Resolve pixel output.

Do restoration before the finishing grade, verifying edges and original grain before routing the 2D result through a ColorCorrector and MediaOut. Always restore Output Mode to Patched Result if you used a diagnostic mode.

This guide separates three evidence levels: what the two archived Inspector PNGs actually show; Blackmagic-documented options absent or grey in those captures; and behaviors requiring live Resolve 21/21.1 confirmation.