Who wants to share his experiences about image stabilization? I tried Deshaker in VirtualDub. It works well but is a bit complicated to use (e.g. needs two passes). Also I tried DeshakerIf which is a interface to integrate deshaker into Vegas. But that doesn't work, it always crashes.

Who has found a good, easy and cheap method to stabilize footage in Vegas?

The best I have found so far is Deshaker in VirtualDub. I had to play with the settings some. I just searched the Internet until I found a description of the controls. I probably don't have the optimum settings though. It reduces the shake fairly well, but it introduces a lot of image warping and wabble. I don't think it was really designed to handle translation of the camera as we have with a helment camera.

I just upgraded from the SD camera to the HD wide, so I am hoping the wide angle lens will reduce the shake. I am focusing mostly on reducing camera shake while filming. Better to avoid the problem than try to correct for it. But this is a big issue with helmet cameras - especially for rough activities like dirt biking. It makes it hard to use much of the video I collect.

I use a 3 way approach.

1. Shoot from the stablest vibration free location available. (IE, middle of motor boat at rear)

2. Use a mechanical stabilization device.(I use a mono pod with balance weight on the bottom)

3. Very minimal use of software stabilizer in post production.

Not having control of the shutter speed in the GoPro is the killer, so shoot in the brightest light possible, forcing the cams auto exposure to lift the shutter speed.( less blur and jello)

Rambo wrote:3. Very minimal use of software stabilizer in post production.

Would you share your secret? Which software?

ThMu wrote:

Rambo wrote:3. Very minimal use of software stabilizer in post production.

Would you share your secret? Which software?

ProdaD Mercali Pro, it integrates into Sony Vegas.

Rambo

I spent some time over the weekend testing various settings in the Deshaker plugin for VirtualDub.

For the GoPro Hero HD, here are a few settings that seemed to really help:

1) Enable the rolling shutter compensation feature. Set to 82%. This is a big improvement over older versions that I used with my old SD camera.

2) Set "Edge Compensation" to none. This eliminates the "breathing" caused by the program zooming in and out to minimize border problems.

3) Set "Extra Zoom Factor" to 1.1. This gives a 10% border around the image. If you still see border problems, you may need to increase the number. But increasing the number will cause of loss of resolution. You basically trading border problems for image clarity problems.

With these settings my stabilized video is much easier to watch than the original source - or than the default settings. Of course avoiding shake in the first place is the best solution. But when needed, Deshaker can help.

To make it easy for deshaker to do it's job, cut the footage into smaller clips and eliminate the extreme motion frames other side of the steadier footage.

You do this by scrubbing thru the video frame by frame and identifying the largest differences, you may need to only remove 3 -5 frames but will make a huge difference when presented to Deshaker.
Enough so that you will be able to avoid the boarders around the finished video and less zoom and crop.

Excellent suggestion!

I always end up throwing away the big bumps anyway - so I might as well do that first and get a smoother result for the keeper clips.

DeeG wrote:Excellent suggestion!

I always end up throwing away the big bumps anyway - so I might as well do that first and get a smoother result for the keeper clips.

You got it.

R

I am really impressed with the deshaker software, especially processing a whole 5 lap dirt bike moto which has a lot of motion and is very bumpy helmet cam footage. The only side effect is a ton of jello. 2 questions. Is there any software or plugins that counter or repair the jello effect? And, since I processed the footage as a whole file rather than individual clips, is this most likely why the jello is more present due to fast straights, slow corners. jumps, etc making deshaker adjust for everything? I suppose I could cut my clips where while in the air (which is relatively smooth) it is not deshaked and only use it in the bumpy straight sections? Thanks in advance!