Stabilisation is Wavy/Warped

Hey, the topic said it all, anyone else experience that some clips when activating stabilise will become wavy, especially in Smoothcam?

Hey Odedh, I definitely run into the same thing from time to time. I think it's totally dependent on the clip itself and just how much instability there is in the first place.

It might also be dependent on how much rolling shutter skewing is in the recording. Consider that a jiggly might have small skews due to the CMOS sensor. Stabilize the image and the small skews might be more apparent.

You may want to try CoreMelt's Lock & Load to see if it handles it better.

I've had the same problem many times. Have you adjusted some of the sliders in the stabilization menu? I find many times this will help big time.

On the other hand I've done a few films that after stabilizing it came ultra cool and went with the film.

You've gotta watch out for motion blur. If the camera suddenly moves in a direction for a few frames, it will blur while it is moving unless you are at a high shutter speed or it's not moving very much. When stabilized, your footage will be rock solid, but you'll see a lot of little blur streaks that come in and affect the entire image.

when it works good it's great, but sometimes it's just really blurry, i'll post an example tomorrow i hope

Here is an example of the wobbly stabilize. It starts with the original footage, and with stabilizer on

odedh wrote: Here is an example of the wobbly stabilize. It starts with the original footage, and with stabilizer on

In this case, given the original footage, I think you're just plain asking too much. For that kind of camera movement you don't need a stabilization plug in... you need a time machine. (You know, to go back and re-shoot the footage?)

You need to do fine tunning and try if Smoothcam or Intertia cam is better (FCPX don't always do the smartest "automatic" choice). Sometimes a 0.1 valor can visually change a lot.

And I dunno if it's still the case on the 10.1.1, but it can be useful to delete your "optical flow" calculated clip and put it a new one to re-do the calculation. I've done that due to some weird movement artefact with the exact same stabilization valor and the results was different. I suspect that FCPX use(d?) some different version to do that calculation when you put many color layer, so try with a "nude" clip with no correction.




Image from the FCPX manual. . In my current work, I almost never use "scale" value that I let at zero and rotation at half/third of the translation value.

Thanks guys, at least i know it's not a bug

hie,,,
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Redifer wrote: You've gotta watch out for motion blur...

Exactly right. The FCP stabilizer cannot de-blur a frame. If he plays back the original material frame by frame, the ones with rapid motion will be blurred. Video is just a sequence of stills.

What is a stabilization tool to do? It could show the blurred frame, or blend it to surrounding frames, or delete it and use optical flow to synthesize a frame from surrounding ones. Each of those options entails trade-offs.

Camera shake can also induce rolling shutter artifacts which distorts the image. Depending on the distance to subject, camera shake can also produce slightly different view angles. All those induce problems which must be handled by the stabilizer in post -- by image analysis alone without any camera motion data. In theory a motion sensor on the camera could record vibration data that if combined with EXIF video data could produce better stabilization results if post processing software could interpret that. To my knowledge nobody has tried that yet.

Some stabilization products use selective warping of image regions to reduce distortion, but there's no universal solution.

If you know ahead of time the footage will be shaky, using a faster frame rate or higher shutter speed can help. With a DSLR or similar camera, we normally adhere to the 180 degree shutter rule, so for 1080p/30 material, we use 1/60th sec shutter speed. However in an extreme case using 720p/60 (which normally uses 1/120th) and/or changing to a higher shutter speed might help. That can induce other artifacts, such as strobing motion. However it would probably make stabilization work better in post, at least reducing frame blurring.

This is why optical or physical stabilization at capture time is so important. Digital stabilization in post is amazing but has definite limitations. If you have no camera stabilization at capture time, at least try to smooth out the camera motions -- IOW trade fine-grain rapid shaking for slower motions. In general the slower the motion, the better stabilization works in post.