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Stabilize Jumps?


Ernie Zahn

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So, I know you can't totally stabilize the image, but I was wondering if anyone had experience with a post solution to stabilize the jumps that can happen in Super 8 footage. I just want to fix the pronounced ones - the ones that distract from the viewing experience.

 

Any suggestions? I tried smoothcam in FCP 7 and it has a hard time analyzing them. I'm going to try DaVinci and After Effects next. But if ya'll have a good idea to save time, that would be much appreciated.

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I find the warp stabilizer effect in Adobe Premeire Pro CC 2014 to be as near to perfect as possible. I'll try to post some comparison footage ASAP. But basically, using a standard tripod and Canon 1014 XL-S pointing straight down the aisle and the stabilize effect set to "no motion" I get exactly that... A perfectly stable image. This assumes a good scan, of course. If the background has any distortion due to line scanners and frame jitter it will not work correctly and will look very funky.

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I love the Warp Stabilizer. The most natural effect I have found through experimentation, is to set the effect to 1%, choose Smooth Motion and select position, scale and rotation. This seems to leave all actual movement of the camera behind, while removing all the film jitter and weave. It also removes subtle lens breathing when focusing.

 

It does have problems with scenes like big face closeups where someone turns their head, causing the entire frame to shift too much. Then the manual Motion Tracker needs to be used. I wish you could use something like a lasso tool to select one or more "anchors" in the frame and still use the automated WS effect.

Edited by Steve Zimmerman
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I love the Warp Stabilizer. The most natural effect I have found through experimentation, is to set the effect to 1%, choose Smooth Motion and select position, scale and rotation. This seems to leave all actual movement of the camera behind, while removing all the film jitter and weave. It also removes subtle lens breathing when focusing.

 

It does have problems with scenes like big face closeups where someone turns their head, causing the entire frame to shift too much. Then the manual Motion Tracker needs to be used. I wish you could use something like a lasso tool to select one or more "anchors" in the frame and still use the automated WS effect.

 

I pretty much do this but only let it scale and turn on max scale to like 105% or around there. Depends on the shot though, sometimes I get it trying to track the motion of people instead of just stabilizing the frame. I've found that cutting the length down for clips increases the success rate, i.e. don't take a 10 minute single clip and try to stabilize it, cut it down into shots and apply the effect individually.

 

I recently watched a friend of mine do some stabilization in Resolve and it looked so simple to put exact points to stabilize and eliminate false points of motion you don't want it tracked to. I really keep meaning to do a tutorial or something of the like just pertaining to super 8 jitter.

 

Looks like you are on the right track though

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I recently watched a friend of mine do some stabilization in Resolve and it looked so simple to put exact points to stabilize and eliminate false points of motion you don't want it tracked to. I really keep meaning to do a tutorial or something of the like just pertaining to super 8 jitter.

 

 

Does the free version of Resolve have those stabilization controls? Sounds great.

SZ

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