Does anyone know any software which will stabilize jittery video ? I have some footage which was recorded at a loud concert and one of the cameras is really affected by the bass frequencies.. Everytime the drummer hits the bass drum it makes the footage jittery because the vibration on the floor was affecting the tripod.. Ive seen some tutorials for After effects but they focussed on fixing a shakey hand.. whereas this effect is much finer vibration

Is there any software out there that can stabilize this smaller vibration ? it would be great if a reputable company made something specifically for this.. The problem is theres lots of zooming in the footage also so can you seperate and fix the jittery aspect from the zooming and pans etc ?

Mercalli has one

NewblueFX has one

After Effects

give search a try-this has been talked about many times

After Effects CS5 has Mocha, which is a powerful tracker.

However, if you used a slow shutter speed, such as 1/60 or slower, that won't solve the motion blur problem. So while your image might get nicely stabilized, you'll still have an odd "motion blur" problem constantly plaguing your footage.

I used a Z1 to shoot it, its done as PAL 50i.. Ive seen the tracker in After effects where you manually select points and it tracks those pixels from frame to frame but i dont think that would work for me... what ive got is very small vibrations that last for a split second then stop and then start again.. Everytime the bass drum in a song is hit is when it happens.. So its frequent, but the upshot is its freqency is fairly low.. Do you think the stabilization programs that exist are going to be able to deal with this type of problem ?

I used something called Silhouette to stabilize a shot that was with the camera in high winds. The slight vibrations were nicely removed.

I don't know if AE's basic tracker can do that, and I went straight to the Silhouette plug-in to handle the task. I know that Silhouette is a better tracker even if it's slightly less convenient than AE's built-in tracker.

Mocha should be able to do it even better. I can't say for sure as I just got AE CS5 last night and hadn't been able to test it yet.

i just downloaded the newblueFX plugin for Vegas and its really not doing what i need.. Unless im way of with the settings it doesnt seem to be detecting the minor vibrations and is just doing something completely different..

Randy... If you can provide a few seconds of the problem footage I can see what I can do with the tools available here. That way you can see if stabilizing it makes it any better or if it's even possible to stabilize it at all.

If these guys can't help you, send me a sample and lemme play with it. I've done miracles with lots of footage for folks. But what Dean said was right. If the shutter speed was slow, you may be up a creek even if we do get the motion stabilized.

If i upload a sample and you guys manage to get it looking better, would you then tell me what you have done or would you want me to send all the footage ? I wouldnt be able to do the later thats all so ultimately i need to try and work out how to overcome it at my end.

But i would really appreciate the help and could upload a short clip if thats suitable ? Thanks

Randy... No problem giving you the details of what was used and how it was done. If you happen to have similar software then you can apply the same techniques to help fix what you have.

I don't think I'll have time to do all the footage as I'm in post production mode right now and have other projects in progress.

If i upload a sample and you guys manage to get it looking better, would you then tell me what you have done or would you want me to send all the footage ? I wouldnt be able to do the later thats all so ultimately i need to try and work out how to overcome it at my end.

But i would really appreciate the help and could upload a short clip if thats suitable ? Thanks

If I end up doing it, I'll get you the downloads for what I use and send screenshots of the configurations. I've done this numerous time for others here on this forum and elsewhere.

YouTube - Stabilization Demo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwewV0-svHg)

YouTube - Stabilization test of tracking shot through the woods. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izx4vShFlgw)

Video Comparo - Free Software Test on Vimeo

That's a basic idea....

i uploaded a short clip.. Its an M2T file straight from the Z1.. Its not very long and there might be worse areas in the recording than this but its a fair example of how it looks through most of the shoot..

Here is the link.. password = dvinfo

RapidShare: 1-CLICK Web hosting - Easy Filehosting (http://rapidshare.com/files/382166013/CLIP.rar.html)

size around 80meg

By the way we take our sound from the mixing console so the audio off the camera is hugely distorted but we dont need to use it so we generally dont worry about it..

The other camera is on the opposite side of stage and in front of a similar speaker but (strangely) didnt seem to get any vibration at all ? Which makes me wonder about the nature of vibration itself.. Because of the hit and miss nature of this at louder concerts it would be great to find a solution in software.. If not a perfect fix just something to clean it up cause its almost unusable otherwise..

I had a thought, this kinda doesnt make much sense but i'll mention it... Do you think its possible that the Z1 picture was being affected because the audio levels were too high ? Could such high volume through the internal mics have been an issue ? I know that doesnt typically make sense but because the camera on the other side didnt get it at all it makes me wonder why only one camera was affected under very similar conditions.

Thanks for the help.

Randy...

You uploaded a .RAR file which my Macs don't recognize. Stuffit tried to open it and asked for a passphrase.

If you have time you might want to upload something more universal like a .AVI file or something that doesn't require decompression to open up.

When it asked for the pass phrase did you put in "dvinfo" ? Thats the password i put on it.. If you tried entering the password and it didnt work i will upload another file.

Yea, the RAR file wasn't the best idea. I got it opened and had a looksee, but was on my way to set this morning. I'll have a good look at it when I get a moment.

Randy... I opened the file and got a good look at it.

Because the camera's moving around a lot (zooming and panning), it's much harder to pick out a target to stabilize the entire clip.

Also, is the footage interlaced? It's harder to track interlaced footage. Not impossible, just tougher. The vibration is at a frequency that's higher than the frame rate so what you're seeing is more of a blur than a shake. In my opinion it's extremely hard, if not impossible, to remove what you're seeing. And even if the image is stabilized, you're still left with the motion blur.

If a procedure is developed to remove the vibration, the cost would be prohibitive.

Best option: reshoot with a camera that's on a platform that's not vibrating. Isolate the camera on something solid. Weight down the tripod legs with sandbags. Putting more mass near the camera gives it more inertia and it will be less likely to be influenced by external forces.

Or... get the camera further away from the speakers.

Set it up during a sound check just to make sure.

Thanks Dean... The footage is interlaced.. what you have said is what i had feared..

I have found the nature of vibration when filming bands to be hard to predict and solve.. In this instance the tripod was on the floor and from past experiences i had found this better than using a riser or a table.. Although as im discovering its still hit and miss.. Given the layout of the room the positions we had were the best by far for the film aspect and im happy with that side of it, just the vibration obviously is the prob.. We werent able to go further back because the bar was right behind me...

I didnt use sandbags although its something id like to try.. How would you suggest to use them, just around the feet of the tripod or somewhere else ?

Also as a different approach, do you think it would be worthwhile trying something to dampen the feet on the tripod ? I thought about getting some foam (maybe something shock absorbant) and making some fairly thick glove type things to go around them.. It might make the tripod a bit less stable but the foam should absorb the vibration somewhat and i could handle a bit less stability in exchange for no vibration..

Unfortunately we cant film again, this wasnt intended for anything too important though so its not the end of the world, although i want to work out how to avoid this next time because it does ruin things.. The strange thing is we had a camera on the other side getting the mirror image, it was placed in a similar spot in relation to the speakers and it really didnt suffer the vibration at all ? It's made me wonder about the nature of the problem and just how to fix it..

Also Its done at 1080i but id be happy to drop it back to SD if it would make a difference.. Would lowering the resolution help it do you think ?

Perrone.. If you have any suggestions id be grateful.. If software could remove some of it that would still help..

The foam on the feet issue has been discussed before, and I find it can work in some situations.

I prefer the sand bags idea, but take it a step further, and also place some under the tripod feet.

Randy...

You weren't on a concrete floor, I'm guessing.

Placing foam under the tripod might reduce vibrations coming up the legs but it might also reduce the stability of the tripod, depending on the type of foam used. You might look around for some sort of elastomeric substance that will absorb vibrations without being too soft.

Place the shock-absorbing material on the floor, the place something hard atop the shock absorber, then put the tripod on that. The hard material can be 3/4" plywood. Doesn't have to be the whole sheet. In fact using a sheet might create more problems as it can also pick up the acoustic vibrations you're trying to isolate. You can probably make a three-way "spider" with anchor points that fit the tripod's feet or spikes. The spider sits on the elastomeric material. It's lighter. Easier to transport. And unlikely to pick up much of the vibration itself.

Try placing the sandbags higher up on the tripod. Make a loop of rope or strong cord that will sit about halfway up the tripod, then suspend the sandbags from that, with the sandbags resting against the legs. It should help dampen any vibrations coming up the legs.

What about trying the pads that you put under studio monitors to isolate them from your desk??? Just an idea, and you'd need 3 of them, but it might work if you put a sheet of plywood on top of the pads and put the tripod on the plywood- oh yeah, put something heavy on top of the plywood too while you're at it. Maybe a few sandbags or a couple of barbell weights. Or even a 5 gallon pail of water in between the tripod legs. Should be heavy enough.

I think the two keys to damping resonance/vibration are elastic suspension and mass. In fact it isn't necessary to damp all motion, just to shift the frquency of vibration down to where it is slow enough for stabilization software to work correctly.

We run into these kinds of issues all the time in designing the read/write actuators for tape drives and the trick is always to shift the resonant frequency of the system so it's lower than the frequency at which we drive the actuator up and down. So getting the resonant frequency down under say half the frame rate or thereabouts might be good enough

Dean...It was a wooden floor, but strangely my friend filming on the other side had almost the exact same conditions but didnt get hardly any vibration ??

What you are saying about the shock absorbing material and the panel on top of that is what im working towards.. I just want to find out the most effective shock absorbing items to use under the panel.. Ive seen various bits of foam and other things like air springs and all look to have some ability but my hope is to navigate through the options as best i can before i start spending otherwise i might end up with a bunch of things that dont work that well and wasting money..

Jim.. Ideally id like to take the idea of using software out of the equation. Its my hope to get it stable enough across most scenarios i encouter so that the footage is looking good straight from the shoot.. I am fairly confident i will get something working, just how effective and how many rounds of trial and error is the question..

The problem for me is, live rock music is loud and has many frequencies pumping out at the same time and in different venues the acoustic can change it quite a lot.. It's mostly the bass thats causing the problem but whatever i get has to be fairly good across a wide spectrum of low frequencies.. Id guess and say anything from 160-200hz and down... Ive tried emailing some places that sell vibration isolators and things im just waiting to hear back.

Yes, of course it's best not to have to use stabilization S/W, but at least if you can get into a range where it would work you'd be ahead of the game. I'm not surprised that it's dependent on where you are on the floor.

Did you try hand holding? If so how does it look compared to the tripod munted shots? In other words how effective are YOU as a vibration damper? I think if hand held footage is more stable (maybe normally jerky as hand held usually is, but not as prone to higher frequency vibration) then it would seem to prove that isolation and mass (YOU) will do the trick! Then it's just a matter of finding the right amount of isolation and mass needed. Mass does wonderful things in combatting vibration - it's why industrial machinery is purposfully made so heavy.

Thanks Jim.. I agree with what you are saying regarding the software aspect..

I have tried holding cameras in the past when its been a problem and it has worked ok, just the usual fatigue and shakes you would expect but no vibration from the PA.. This last time i filmed i needed to be fairly high up so i was standing on a stool and using a large tripod.. I didnt actually think to go hand held but im not sure how i would have gone anyway as i didnt have much room to balance on the stool and using a Z1 may have been a bit awkward in that scenario..

I just rang some places today and one person was very helpful.. he sold items for industrial machinery and things but seemed to understand sound a bit also.. he actually suggested trying squash balls under each corner of the wooden platform and maybe a few in the middle.. Then use a sandbag on top of the platform for weight.. Do you have any thoughts on how effective that might be ?

Im not sure how id secure squash balls thats the only thing.. originally i had thought of inner tube but something tells me sqush balls might work better ? (for a cheap attempt at a solution) ...

Do you want to take this back to the "Camera Support" forum where it belongs, I'm finding it hard to keep up with the multiple threads going on here?

The "guys" have, as usual, come up with some great ideas and the idea of the squash balls isn't so stupid either (super glue, maybe?) but we're either in one Forum or another and it's getting a bit tedious, especially as this one has gone from mechanics to software to mechanics in two different Forums.

I'd like to think "the guys" would follow it, but am not so sure they're happy of the ground there (don't blame 'em).

Just a thought.


CS

Good point Chris.

Just one thought re squash balls - they might make the platform roll around - maybe slightly inflated soccer balls would be better. I still think a 5 gallon can (with lid!) filled with water would be enough mass and you can carry it around empty.

Of course, a nice gyroscopic rig would be great but plywood and soccer balls and water would be cheap!

Anyhow, isolation and mass in one form or another should do it,

Actually an inner tube as you had mentioned might do the trick - but I'd use a bicycle inner tube and only inflate it about halfway - should be a perfect poor man's solution if you get enough mass above it.

Squash balls. That sounds painful.

You can keep them from rolling around by cementing them onto a PVC connector or a very short piece of pipe (try out different sizes), then cementing that to your tripod support. The plastic "collar" will stabilize the ball nicely.

Use an adhesive which works with elastic material to attach the ball to the PVC.

Roughen the surface of the ball with 80- or 60-grit sandpaper.

You might try Armaflex 520 adhesive. There's a guy who attaches pieces of old carpet to the bottom of his shoes for walking on the reef, and it supposedly holds nicely. You might be able to find this at Ace Hardware, etc.

Apply the cement, add a little weight to the plywood plate, and let it cure thoroughly overnight.

Other adhesives worth trying: Cyanoacrylates for leather and rubber. Five-minute epoxies that cure with some flexibility.

Keep in mind that the goal in adding weight is to increase inertia near the camera so that it takes more energy to impart motion to the camera and its optics. Suspending sand bags attached near the head of the tripod might be able to do this.

And you want to miminize any large surfaces that will be driven by acoustic impulses. A sheet of plywood will pick up more of that acoustic energy than a slimmer piece of wood. Making a triangle out of 2x4's would be less affected by loud sounds than a larger sheet of plywood.

I had thought of an egg holder upside down to place the squash balls in but i wasnt sure if constraining the balls ability to flex around its sides would negate its dampening ? When you say PVC pipe are you saying cut it off and use it so the pipe is still a full circle (similar to the egg holder) and placed vertically under the platform ? or are you saying cut it in half so you get half circle and attach it horizontally under the platform ?

I thought if i used the half circle concept i could cut it back fairly close and make it more like 1/3rd circle and make a small track of it to allow 2 balls side by side.. Then if i just glued the top part of the balls to the PVC it would probably still allow the sides to flex out fairly well..

Having said that im not sure the squash balls pressure is going to be tuned as well.. Im not a scientist but my intuition tells me lower air pressure will dampen low frequencies better, so i think the inner tube fairly flat might work better than squash balls with higher inflation.. Both those options are cheap though so I can experiment without it costing me too much.

Randy... Yes, just use a short length of PVC pipe to create a "cup" that will help keep the ball from rolling out of position. Diameter will probably be 1/3 of the diameter of the ball to help ensure the ball still remains flexible yet stabilized in place.