Warp Stabilizer for FCPX...equivalent?

So everyone is going nuts over warp stabilizers, After Effects and its relevant plugins for "warp stabilization". Is there anything out there that is remotely as effective as these in our FCPX world?

thanks.,

I don't gets nuts over the warp stabilizer in AE. It's like any other stabilizer: it does an excellent job on footage that isn't too bad and it doesn't work that well with footage that is very complex.

We had a perfect example the other day. Someone asked me if I could have a look at some footage that was recorded on a fast driving truck without any stabilizing gear. Bad picture jumps and very shaky moves. Tried the warp stabilizer and could not get any decent results without completely zooming into the picture and losing every detail. So we spilt up the clips to allow better analyzing and this gave more acceptable results. Just for the heck of it I applied the FCP X stabilizer to the same split up clips, and the results were similar. Finally we tried Coremelt's Lock&Load plugin in FCP X and this gave us the best stabilizing with the least picture loss. So maybe that's an alternative you could check out.

- Ronny

Ronnie, Coremelt is awesome and their support is great in my experience. I was one of the very original users of Lock & Load in FCPX, and I still continue to use it, in almost all my projects.

My concern is more specifically (probably rooted in media, rather than experience) with handling hyper lapse projects.....and all the hype that I've been reading around it and the ability of AE and its plugins (again as I've read). I don't use AE, so I was wondering if its worth a try.

But I thought to first ask if there is something better than current FCPX standards. I guess not - so I'll stick with Coremelt and FCPX.... thanks.

Hi Bill,

I think that's a good idea.

Warp stabilizer is fairly automatic and, depending on the quality of the shots, it produces nice results. But it's a slow process and most of the times it doesn't work well from the start. If you read up on how some hyper lapses have been created with AE, you will see that most of them required multiple passes before getting any decent results.

Motion 5 is also an excellent tool for creating hyper lapses. When you combine its motion tracker (first pass) with the Lock&Load stabilizer (second pass) you can get amazing results with lesser effort than when using AE.

- Ronny

Awesome Ronnie! Thanks!

I HIGHLY recommend the image stabilization in DaVinci Resolve. The base (free) version has it, so there's no barrier to giving it a shot. I had interview material where the subject had to be on screen at one particular moment and there was a camera move that was distracting from the content. To make matters more challenging, the background was defocused so there were no easy points to lock the tracker to.

I tried FCPX (since I was cutting in it), Motion 5, and the Warp Stabilizer in PPro/AE. None of them could handle it. I jumped over to Resolve with that one shot, and WOW. Once the client posts the piece online I can pass along the link with TC to where the stabilization was done.

It takes a little practice, but it's worth having Resolve in your toolbox for this and many other tasks.

Bill

I just checked, and it's posted here:

video.pbs.org/video/2365549518/

Jump down to 27 minutes (I recommend watching the whole thing, but I'm biased ) and take a look at the final interview shot. There are at least two camera moves that needed to be corrected.

Cheers,
Bill

Vote here for Lock & Load!

Here is a example I was working today, mainly on testing purpose. The original footage is well stabilised (sort term) but the panning is very uneven speed for various reasons, more about it in here: www.levitezer.com/styled-2/blog-2/index.html



The FPC Stabiliser works quite nicely smoothing the panning speed, but easily causes unwanted side-effects. For some reason the Stabilisers keyframes was greyed out? are the keyframes not used with stabiliser? Also Inertia cam tripod mode is greyed out? Any idea why this is?

The FCP stabiliser settings seem to be much limited and for this purpose it seems to do more than needed automatically. I will try DaVinci next...

Nice work, thefcpguy. Great job of capturing what it was like to make a film back in the analog days - Aaton cameras, 16mm film, shooting photographs off a wall with magnets, multitrack analog sound mixing reels, bins - it's almost like they were chiseling the film from stone by (today's) digital standards. No wonder FCP calls it the Ken Burns Effect.

I haven't tried the stabilizer in Resolve yet but I have Lock&Load and it does an amazing job as BenB says.

perhaps not the kind of answer you expect, but why all these 'high computation' methods (which don't improve over-all pic-quality imho)?

If you know, you need a 'robo pan' = no stutter, no shake, no nothing ..
take a few hi-def photos (!) and stitch it together with any pana-sotware.
Pan the resulting 12.000x1.080 pic with the usual keyframing tools in FCPX ...

... too simple thought?

That was my thought too after seeing the end result, it looks much like panning a photo (though there is some waves visible at the start and exposure changes turing the pan)

On that regard this example was not that good, often there could be also moving objects on the video though

The problem with FCP stabilization tools is that they are indeed computing too much. What I would like to archive is smoothing the pan speed and pan starts and stops by simply reframing the frames. Also changing the frame rate could be used, but not if there is much moving objects on the video.

The gimbal stabilizes the image really well (keeping the camera on place when the outer frame moves) there is no post stabilization needed for that. The stabilization is needed only for smoothing the camera moves when it is moved on purpose, with joystick or gimbal follow functionality. The best solution is to have the gimbal well tuned also for panning and tilting, but sometimes the tuning is not perfect.

Especially 4k video when published at 1080P gives good room for cropping the frames to smooth the pans, but manually done that would take too much time, I am looking for tools to do that job.

On that regard this example was not that good, often there could be also moving objects on the video though

The obligatory flock of birds... add in post. Or shimmer on water. Your superwide 170° doesn't pick up details... evenworse: the lense distrotion makes the lil' island in teh foreground 'wobble'...

Now, seriously, what you're discribing is an excellent example of the Uncanny Valley , usually related to CGI... but doesn't Warp Stabilzing crosses the border line to CGI?

Why do CGIartists add all those 'analogue errors' to their crystal clean stuff? light leaks, DoF, free hand shakeyness...to make it look 'natural'.

And you want it vice versa: a Drone/Gimbal shot should look smooth as silk, "touched by no human hands"… til it looks unnatural at all.-

What do you want to tell/illustrate with that shot? "Hey, we have a copter cam!" ... ? Then, keep the imperfection.-

My question is purely technical, how to archive smooth yaw, when the original material was not that smooth. The example is just an example, it has no other than technical value showing what I want to archive. (not video that looks like panning photograph, but smooth yaw.)

Here is better example of what I want to archive and BTW, no stabilisation was used during editing phase on this



It is a different question is a computer game like camera movement desirable, but that is what I want to archive. I am not even saying that it is better than something else, just that it is the reason I am at this forum now.

My question is purely …

… academically, message understood!


Your last example is what I called robo-pan, you call it 'computer game like camera movement' … although you a like to discuss on a pure technical level, 'film' has allways meta-layersof content and meaning, what affects the audience.

Your example looks - for me! - terrible! This overdone HDR look (the purple sky at the end!), and especially the obviously recompression loss of - I guess, at last: - 5 generations of back'n forth compression offends the eye (there's no quality differrence watching that in 720 or 240 …) . 'Leaves' brake most codecs the neck… proofen by that clip.

in short: I don't care, even care for smoothness, it looks like 'game' in the early 21st (yes, I've seen the Phantom's shadow on the tree and roof) - could be 'practical', but that 'pixel mud' is just boring.

For me!

Technically? If you want to apply any kind of in-the-post picture refinement, you need a 1st class source- material … if you want 'flow', start with stabilizing hardware in cam, gimbal, drone.

yah, well, sometimes the cameraman just makes a nervous panning even with a perfect system.

Any suggestions how to fix pan only problem on FCP would be welcome. (uneven panning speed, too sudden stops or starts)

The FCP stabilizer seems to do much else too and that is causing much unwanted side-effects. Keyframes could help, but are not available for Stabilizer on my FCP X, is that normal?

There are certain types of shots that work with, and don't work with drones. We've been shooting with them for over four years now. You can't avoid some of the hard mechanical aspects of it. It just takes a LOT of practice, the right drone, the right cameras, and the right FVP system. Some things can't be fixed in post.

Yes indeed, but I think simple panning problems can be fixed (to some degree) as demonstrated on the above example. I just would like to find a better way to do it and a stabilizer that does not try to do other stabilization than pan smoothing.

I get pretty perfectly stabile video (no vibrations, no jello), this is from yesterdays test flight.



On this one, framing was not perfect, flight bath was not perfect, those I need to practice and do better. Anyway this was a test flight focusing to panning performance, smooth corrections on forest is ok, on faster pans there is still some aspects to improve.

Because this is a small platform and follow yaw configuration, it likely never will be perfect panning on all conditions. There always is some conditions that the panning will fail. My bigger platforms work much better, but this small platform is water proof, so there is reason for it to exist too.

What I am asking is how to improve panning smoothness on FCP X without doing other stabilization. The methods I think could be used is simply repositioning the frames so that it smooths the pan and/or changing the frame rate smoothly so that it smooths pan.

I understand there is limitations for using these methods, if there is moving objects on the frame or if there is objects at close and far distances on same frame... Anyway, for correcting the pans, these are the tools I would like to try, but do not know how to other than manually reframing and speeding and that takes too much time.

We always have to indicate what kind of production we are speaking of. Run-n-gun vs documentary? High-Budget vs low budget, circumstances, etc...

In my specific situation, where I indicated a concern for hyper lapse, planning was allowed and much practice is needed. It was my first try. So sure a great post-plugin may not be necessary, and the result of the bad vs good must be weighed appropriately. But when Im shooting a wedding - sometimes, just sometimes, I'll still need that stabilizer (no matter what).

I say "no matter what" because I do take risks when shooting an event. Sometimes you just have to get in there. Setting up cameras on tripods and sitting back with a remote and monitor isn't my style. I have seen it though. Is a wedding a documentary? Maybe it is for some... For me a celebration, its a party, its an experience.

Additionally, there are obviously two schools of thought in the above conversation: Super crisp/rigid/perfect/clear vs. freestyle/artsy/"live" feeling. It all depends on what, the person who is paying you to shoot, wants! :ohmy:

Just an update on real life stabilisation, made some nice progress on yaw control



I did not think this small platform could be this good

This kind of shot would likely be difficult to stabilize on editing SW because so much is moving at different distances?

My question still is, for the shots like my original example, simple scene and far away object, and the camera man makes nervous panning. how could that be corrected on FCP X without it trying to correct anything else. The problem especially is if there is first tilting and then panning, or both at the same time. FCP X stabilizer tries to correct both and it shout not touch the totally smooth tilt. (of course there could be also problems with tilt, but usually is not)