{"id":1127,"date":"2012-06-18T19:26:44","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T18:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/?p=1127"},"modified":"2012-06-18T19:26:44","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T18:26:44","slug":"software-steadicam-or-how-to-fix-bad-cameramen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/?p=1127","title":{"rendered":"Software steadicam – Or how to fix bad cameramen"},"content":{"rendered":"

So you’ve just come back from vacations (wohoo), having filled 10 gigs of photos and video, only to discover you’re a (let’s be honest here) shitty<\/em> cameraman without your tripod<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fret not, for this article will show you the secret to solve your problems!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In an ideal world, your hands are as steady as a rock, and you get Hollywood quality takes<\/strong>. In the real world, however, your clumsy hands could use a hand (hah!<\/em>).<\/p>\n

So here’s your two main options:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hardware solution (for use while <\/em>filming)<\/em><\/h2>\n

This is the proper solution<\/em>: a system that will compensate for the vibration of your shaky hands and the movement of your body while walking – not unlike the springs on your car allow for a pretty comfortable ride through all sorts of bumps.<\/p>\n

Ideally, it will compensate for all the 6 axis<\/strong> (3D traslation + 3D rotation), but in practice you may be limited to less than that. Unfortunately (for most), this depends on how deep your pockets are<\/em> (buying a ready-to-use steadicam<\/strong>, ranging from 100 bucks to several thousand<\/a>), or on how handy<\/em> you are with your toolbox (building<\/strong> a home-built equivalent<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The result could (in theory) be similar to this<\/em>:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

(ah, yeah… a segway, minor detail)<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

Software solution (for use after<\/em> filming):<\/h2>\n

If you can’t spare a segway + a steadycam backpack<\/em>, there are affordable alternatives. And if you already<\/strong> have many shaking, blurry videos lying on your hard disk, then this is your only option!<\/p>\n

We’ll rely on PC software<\/strong> to fix those videos. This, you can do for free<\/strong> at home. There are some payware<\/em> software packages that may produce slightly better results: but what I’m going to show you is freeware<\/em>, very quick to use, and good enough quality for most purposes.<\/p>\n

The software method may not be that good when compared to an actual steadicam, but hey, it’s better than nothing!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The steps:<\/h3>\n

I’m not going to go much into details, so here’s the basics.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Download<\/strong> VirtualDUB<\/a><\/strong>, an open source and free video editing software.
    \n(Make sure you can open your videos. E.g. you may need to install the     ffdshow-tryout<\/a> codecs and set them up, or whatever; Google<\/a> is your friend! \ud83d\ude42 )<\/li>\n
  2. Once you can open your videos, you have to download<\/strong> the magic piece of the puzzle: Deshaker<\/a><\/strong>.
    \n(This free tool – though unfortunately not open source – will do all the important work)<\/li>\n
  3. Now open your video, add the Deshaker video filter<\/strong>, choosing “Pass 1<\/strong>“.
    \n(If you have a rolling shutter camera (most likely), and know its speed (unlikely), you can also correct it by entering the necessary values in there)<\/li>\n
  4. Click OK<\/strong>, and play the video<\/strong> through.
    \n(This will gather information about     motion vectors<\/a> and similar stuff, in order to find out how to correct the shaking, if present)<\/li>\n
  5. Now edit the Deshaker video filter settings again, and choose “Pass 2<\/strong>“. Tweak settings at will, and click OK<\/strong>.
    \n(A progress window will be visible for just a few moments)<\/li>\n
  6. Finally, export<\/strong> the resulting video, and you’re good to go!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For a more detailed guide (including rolling shutter values for some cameras), just read the official Deshaker page<\/a>, or browse Youtube; there’re some tutorials there too.<\/p>\n

    The settings basically tune the detection of camera movement<\/strong>, as well as what method will deal with the parts of the image that are left empty<\/strong> after deshaking.<\/p>\n

    The results:<\/h3>\n

    The video below is an example I’ve cooked<\/strong> for you. Each of the 3 processed videos uses a different combination of settings, and was created in no more than 20 minutes each<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    I sticked them all together for your viewing pleasure. The improvement can be easily appreciated!<\/p>\n

    <\/object><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    That’s it. Happy filming!<\/strong> 8)<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Bonus track<\/h2>\n

    If you insist on using hardware solutions (good!<\/em>), here’s a neat little trick that’ll allow some smooth panning<\/strong> (provided you’re not walking):<\/p>\n

    <\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So you’ve just come back from vacations (wohoo), having filled 10 gigs of photos and video, only to discover you’re a (let’s be honest here) shitty cameraman without your tripod?   Fret not, for this article will show you the secret to solve your problems!   In an ideal world, your hands are as steady […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[10,13,23,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stenyak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}