Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

How Do I get rid of "jello" when stabilizing hand held shots?

Phil Bates

Phil Bates

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 4, 2007
Messages
685
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Website
www.artbeats.com
I guess I am wondering if the "jello" effect is coming from the rolling shutter or lens distortion. I removed the lens distortion by shooting a grid and matching it to a fixed grid in AE. The problem is still there. Any ideas? Any magic software plug-ins that will fix this?

Thanks,
Phil
 
Warp stabilizer helps a lot when you use a wide lens. Wide lens stabilization does not work with simple planar stabilizers because the edges move with different velocity than the center.
This can result in a jello looking effect, even if you are using a non-rolling shutter camera. Warp stabilize takes a bit of tuning. I sometimes shoot with an 8mm lens, which aggravates the problem more.
If your footage has severe shake or vibration the rolling shutter will be the dominant issue. Perhaps the rolling shutter plugin can help there. Sample footage posted will help us understand what you are dealing with.
 
Here is some sample footage. The first half is the unstable source, the second half has been stabilized by AE warp stabilizer.
Obviously hand-held aerial footage.

http://vimeo.com/41186806

Specs: Epic 5K 2:1, 30fps, Shutter speed: 1/500, 35mm lens.

Thanks,
Phil
 
Use the RS fixer in CS6 first, then the stabilizer. I was able to get decent footage that way even from an iPhone.
 
Uli Plank said:
Use the RS fixer in CS6 first, then the stabilizer. I was able to get decent footage that way even from an iPhone.
Click to expand...

cs6 does not have a public beta, unless i'm mistaken...

phil, if your shot isn't time-critical you could see if you get better results in cs6 when it comes out. might be interesting to compare results.
 
Canon IS lens and you would have had beaufitul steady footage.
 
Is it me or does the unstabilised footage seem not to exhibit the jello-cam effect? I mean it's wonky as hell but I'm not noticing jello...
 
paulherrin said:
cs6 does not have a public beta, unless i'm mistaken...

phil, if your shot isn't time-critical you could see if you get better results in cs6 when it comes out. might be interesting to compare results.
Click to expand...

Thanks Paul. I"ll also check out the advanced settings in Warp stabilizer.
 
Shane Betts said:
Is it me or does the unstabilised footage seem not to exhibit the jello-cam effect? I mean it's wonky as hell but I'm not noticing jello...
Click to expand...

Thats what I was thinking. Too many stabalisation points I think
 
Phil Bates said:
Really? I am interested but am wondering HOW much better it would be. Would it significantly diminish rolling shutter effects as well as stabilize?

Thanks,
Phil
Click to expand...

Not rolling shuttle if you pan but it eliminates all those little bumps, jitters and shakes and that eliminates the rolling shutter effect at the same time. It makes big difference.

http://vimeo.com/11474687
 
Shane Betts said:
Is it me or does the unstabilised footage seem not to exhibit the jello-cam effect? I mean it's wonky as hell but I'm not noticing jello...
Click to expand...

It's probably just the fact that it's moving around so much and it blends in with all the jitter. Your eyes (and stomach) are working harder to keep things straight, so it's camouflaging most of the rolling shuter artifacts. However, it is also very possible that the warp stabilizer is responsible. It is known to add some crazy business like this.

For a shot like this, you really probably don't want to use the subspace warp method. Try perspective and then position/rotation/scale methods and see what's the best.
I'd probably take your smoothness value up at least to 100%, remember you can go above 100%, and it's very common to do so.

In advanced settings, go ahead and check detailed analysis. (it will take longer to do analyze/stabilize/render be aware)

Once you've tried those things, if you still see rolling shutter - especially if you're just doing a p/r/s method - switch to enhanced rolling shutter reduction.

There's some good information from Adobe. They generally have very good help documentation and tutorial videos - creative cow is a good place for adobe stuff as well... It's usually easier to find an answer by searching the help documentation than it is googling or posting a question somewhere. Not that I mind helping.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS2bacbdf8d487e582-22f2bd5f12da070c78c-7fff.html

http://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2011/04/warp-stabilizer-in-after-effects-cs5-5.html

Also, for tracking/stabilization it can be helpful sometimes to pre-process your footage. If you're having problems getting a good result, and depending on the footage... try some of these things: Get your wb/exposure set and use an s-curve to increase contrast - it can be okay to clip things like the sky that you won't have tracking points for anyways... then increase the sharpness/local contrast using up to a few unsharp masks with various pixel values. If there's something throwing off your track, like somebody moving around in the foreground when you really want to stabilize the horizon - use an alpha channel to mask such areas out. Also, you may need to correct for lens distortion - this can make a huge difference. Also, you can just go ahead and crop the image if there are edge problems/distortions. Once you've got a good result, simply copy the results to your original (or graded) footage and voila.

If you don't have to do any of that and it works right off the bat that's great - but because the way it works in after effects, I would save it for last in the chain of processing (but probably before sharpening and regrain) - after you've done your color adjustments/etc. Otherwise, you lose a lot of valuable image data.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top