Smoothening shaky footage

[Urban Skargren]

Hello.
I have some handheld footage that turned out really shaky, is there any way to smoothen it except "Stabilization" in Final Cut? That tool works great for tripod shots with minor shakes, but when the camera moves and frames different objects, it goes crazy or zooms so much the shot doesn't work anymore.

[Boyd Ostroff]

I've actually been surprised how well the built-in stabilization works, if you use it properly. I had some 15-year-old footage, running down the beach following a friend. I made a short film remembering her when she passed away a couple years ago and the built-in stabilizer definitely improved it. The trick is to break the footage into short sections though, so the software doesn't have to make too many compromises. That may not always be possible however. And there are certainly limits as to what you can expect with really bad footage.

CoreMelt has their own Mocha-based stabilizer plug-in, that might be worth a look. Most of their software offers a 30 day free trial. Have not tried this myself, but I have their SliceX and TrackX plug-ins and like them. https://coremelt.com/products/lock-and-load-x

[Steve Game]

The biggest problem that I've found with stabilisers in post is their inability to handle motion blur. If footage is shot with a 180 degree shutter angle to give the most pleasant motion characteristics, even unacceptable camera shake at least retains this natural smooth flow. That is because movement is largely represented by motion blur with 24/25/30 fps video. If stabilisers then remove the movement of objects across frames, the objects have strange blurs and trails in the ever changing axis of movement often resulting in quite unusable video.
In my experience, when planning to shoot footage that might require stabilisation in post, it is better to shoot with a fairly small shutter angle, (which results in a normally undesirable 'gritty' moving image), - then in post, stabilise, followed by motion blur.

[Urban Skargren]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

CoreMelt has their own Mocha-based stabilizer plug-in, that might be worth a look. Most of their software offers a 30 day free trial. Have not tried this myself, but I have their SliceX and TrackX plug-ins and like them. https://coremelt.com/products/lock-and-load-x

Thanks Boyd!

[Urban Skargren]

Originally Posted by Steve Game

In my experience, when planning to shoot footage that might require stabilisation in post, it is better to shoot with a fairly small shutter angle, (which results in a normally undesirable 'gritty' moving image), - then in post, stabilise, followed by motion blur.

Interesting! Sounds like it requires some tests to be sure before!

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Steve Game

The biggest problem that I've found with stabilisers in post is their inability to handle motion blur.

That is definitely true. However, there are many cases where you'd like to stabilize existing footage and you just have to give it your best try. In the example I mentioned, it was shot in 2003 on my little PDX-10 in 480i60. Experimenting with the stabilizer parameters, I found settings that provided some improvement without introducing too many artifacts. More aggressive settings certainly result in unusable footage.