Warp Stabilizer = future steadicam

[Victor Boyko]

Although the warp stabilizer needs some serious fixes in AE CS5.5 but it is the future steadicam.

[Ryan Czaplinski]

Not if you can't afford to lose the crop area.

Personally I call it the (in nice terms) "rear-end saver" if you couldn't get a shot because of circumstances that wouldn't allow the time and space to setup and achieve the shot you were hoping. I never use it as a tool for steady shots, but to fix something I may have goofed in catching that only had one chance to get. Otherwise I always use my glidecam and slider dolly.

[Kevin Monahan]

Originally Posted by Victor Boyko

Although the warp stabilizer needs some serious fixes in AE CS5.5 but it is the future steadicam.

Which serious fixes are you talking about? Let me know. We also have a feature request page: http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

[Kevin Monahan]

Originally Posted by Ryan Czaplinski

Not if you can't afford to lose the crop area.

The cool thing is that Warp Stabilizer doesn't scale up much at all. Certainly, a lot less than traditional stabilization. There is some, though.

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by Kevin Monahan

The cool thing is that Warp Stabilizer doesn't scale up much at all. Certainly, a lot less than traditional stabilization. There is some, though.

Seems like the newer crop of stabilizers (Warp, Mercalli Pro v 2.0) allow you to "smooth" the camera motion rather than "eliminate" the motion.
This seems to produce an image that is as stable as it needs to be while really reducing the amount of up-scaling required.
It is almost free lunch- good stabilizatiuon of handheld shots & very little image softening :)

[Charles W. Hull]

Originally Posted by Kevin Monahan

Which serious fixes are you talking about? Let me know. We also have a feature request page:

Kevin - it is so slow! Otherwise it does do a nice job. I'm a long time user of Deshaker which also has the nice feature of using the previous and future frames to fill in the borders so there is no cropping (and like Warp Stabilizer it corrects for rolling shutter.) I've compared Warp Stabilizer and Deshaker, and Warp Stabilizer can more that hold its own. But will all its stabilizing features turned on it is so slow it only seems useful for very short clips (if that). A bug? Well it just needs to run much much faster.

Edit: Okay, I'll take some of that back. I remembered that I have one video program that reads Cineform AVI files slowly from my RAID disk. I had been running CF from this RAID with AE and Warp Stabilizer. Sure enough the same files from the C: drive run much faster. The first phase is fairly slow and about the same speed as before, but the 2nd phase is now very quick, where before it was painfully slow. So I have a strange issue with my RAID, but AE and Warp Stabilizer are acting normally.

[Luis de la Cerda]

The things I'd change/add warp stabilizer are:

1. The ability to ignore part of the image when analyzing. (Of particular importance with reflective surfaces.)

2. An option to lock my horizon at a certain frame and avoid all camera roll instead of just smoothing it.

3. An option to ignore camera zooming.

4. Post analysis tools to correct troublesome spot or wonky warps.

5. Independent x, y and z smoothing parameters.

My .02

[Kevin Monahan]

Great Luis! Can you add these in a feature request? http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

Thanks!

[Steve Kalle]

Well....I had the same initial response and thought that I would not need a slider or dolly anymore, but I was very wrong after spending several hours over several days on several clips. It works well for some shots but causes too many problems in other shots where I purposely shot the scene so I can use WS in post. If I wanted to stabilize a 6 foot horizontal move, I would either get a stable shot with lots of blur and distortion at the beginning and end of the shot or a shot that has less distortion and is less stable. There is too much 'automatic' calculation and not enough manual control.

[Victor Boyko]

Kevin, I've been away. But the flaws include: If there are a lot of motion, the footage becomes a little to "warpy" you can see like objects beginning to bend in the background. For example the table stands in my footage with a shot of the rings in the foreground, began to warp and bend in the footage after I apply the warp stabilizer. Also the first few seconds of any clip has the most flaws. I find the biggest problem is that it creates some weird effects, like fake artifacts and bunch of objects in the footage begin to warp and bend. It's strange. I will actually update some footage soon with a link to what I am talking about. This happens pretty much in every clip although I am quite amazed of the effect.

[Steve Kalle]

Hi Victor,

This is exactly what I was seeing in every clip although turning down the motion smoothness reduces the bending at the start and end but it sacrifices the smoothness of the rest of the clip.

[Mikko Topponen]

Originally Posted by Victor Boyko

like fake artifacts and bunch of objects in the footage begin to warp and bend. It's strange.

You can get rid of those by diselecting the "warp" mode and using traditional transform stabilising within warp stabiliser.

[Victor Boyko]

Interesting. I will try to turn down the motion smoothness.