Bit by the shake monster

[Steven Davis]

Well, we shot a rock band, two camera shoot. And my back camera ended up being affected by the base drum. I've never delt with shake like this so I am appealing to my peers on this board for assistance. I run Sony Vegas, and I downloaded NewBlue FX Stablizer demo, it helped some, and it may help more but I'm still trying to figure it out. Does anyone have any other ideas for me or some better software I don't know about. I've placed a 15 second file. Fortunately, the first song has the worst shake. The link for my sample is Index of /temp/delete

I wold deeply appreciate any help. This shake was really a sore spot in what ended up being a good shoot for us. I thank you ahead of time.

[Jose Martins]

Hello,

I'm no expert in the matter, but I've tried stabilizing your footage in After Effects. In order to do that I need some reference point in the image. Something that holds still. I thought that the microphones or the drums would work... but it did not. Those objects are also affected by the bass. Not very much, but enough to fool the tracking. Also there are times where the image has distortion, jello like rolling shutter, were you on a CMOS sensor?

This is just my 2 cents, I would be interested in knowing If you find a way to solve it.

Good luck!

[Renton Maclachlan]

Deshaker - Virtualdub

http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm

[Chris Davis]

Think of what a shake filter/stabilizer does: it analyzes each frame and pans the frame to more closely match the previous frames. That's great if the camera movement is spread across multiple frames. However, your camera shake caused by the bass drum lasts only 2-3 frames each beat. Take a look at those frames - the camera didn't simply move and the image simply needs to be "moved back", it took a big jolt and the individual frames are a blur. A stabilizer plug-in simply does not have enough "clean" frames to work with.

What you could do is use some editing techniques/effects to work with that camera shake. Perhaps add more camera shake so the existing shake is not so noticeable, or exaggerate the bass hits so it looks like you meant to do that. Add pixelation or a newsprint style affect and that would cover up the shake. Just try working with it instead of against it.

I had the exact same thing happen at a show six months ago - the crane shots were filled with shake from the bass drum.

[Philip Howells]

I'd go along with Chris - accept the bass effect and make a virtue of it. If the client objects tell them you offer creative genius.

[Jeff Kellam]

Just for fun I downloaded your clip and ran it through the deshaker script, little change on the vibration blur.

Then I ran it through Neat Video Pro+ using a 5 frame temporal filter and adaptive filtration, still little change (yes I know it's a noise filter) and the drummer fell apart with block noise anyway on my render.

If the original was shot progressive, I think it (all the tools) might work a little better. There are just too many frames involved with each bass hit to make them easily go away.

[Perrone Ford]

As others have mentioned, I was able to stabilize the footage nicely, but the motion blur is just not something you're going to solve. This is why it's critical to have isolation when filming this kind of footage. Sorry, wish I could do more.