Cleaning up dirt, scratches from 35mm print, what's best way to do it?

I have a movie that I'm editing. It was digitized from a 35mm work print. There are a few dozen frames that have dirt on them and a few x marks that were done with china marker. There are some splices showing also. Is there a way to clean up my movie for DVD release without having to spend thousands of dollars and reprinting it? Is it possible to go frame by frame and touch up some of these problems? What's the best way to do it? Motion must be the best program for that, I imagine. Thanks in advance for any help.

Sorry, I would say Motion is NOT the best program for what you want to do. It was built for motion graphics, not clean up duties. There are other methods out there that are used to remove dirt and scractches...

But that's beside the point. WHY are you going to DVD from a work print?? A work print is supposed to be dirty and messed up, and it's only used for approval purposes. It's usually not even color-timed correctly. You need to go back and cut the negative and then have it timed correctly and THEN have that scanned and encoded.

I know but I need to find a distributor before I do that. It's going to cost me a bundle to make an answer print with optical track and titles. So I just want to clean up the movie a little bit to make it presentable. Doesn't adobe make a program that can do that? Like photoshop -- go in and touch up certain frames?

OK, now I understand.

Photoshop might work on a frame by frame basis, although that would be a nightmare and take along time. I think programs like Shake or Combustion would be better suited to removing dirt and scratches like that. They're expensive too (and complicated), so it might be cheaper all around to hire a freelancer who has the software to do it for you.

If not too late, try Cinepaint's Flipbook mode: [cinepaint.org]