Rolling Shutter Removal

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Still a little bit too glitchy to kill steadicams but I'm sure it'll get there within 5 years.

Their rolling shutter removal is pretty impressive though.

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~fliu/project/3dstab.htm

 

[R. Schorman]

thats pretty interesting

in conjunction with a stedicam it would be smooth as glass and a lot sharper result.

 

[Obin Olson]

Makers of NUKE are working on a little gem to help with rolling shutter.....stay tuned..it may pop up around here...

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

I wonder when this will be available to the public? It'd be great to test some stuff out. I know you wouldn't ever want to rely on the software, but it'd be great in a bind.

 

[Joseph Ward]

Makers of NUKE are working on a little gem to help with rolling shutter.....stay tuned..it may pop up around here...

Sounds great. Maybe in the Fall?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

They haven't set a time table.

It may or may not be part of NukeX's camera tracker.

 

[Peter Lundström]

Ive never seen any problems with using rolling shutter cameras attached to a steadicam. I think people are blowing this CMOS issue out of proportion...

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Ahhh but do you need the steadicam if the scene reconstruction can hallucinate a steady and rolling shutter free shot from a really shaky handheld shot?

Shoot on a fast shutter handheld and let the software add the motion blur. We aren't there yet. But we will get there by 2015 I think. I think we're going to move more and more towards a faster lighter shooting style which relies on sophisticated software to add the big 'expensive' camera moves.

 

[Jeff Carpenter]

I think we're going to move more and more towards a faster lighter shooting style which relies on sophisticated software to add the big 'expensive' camera moves.

sounds interesting... care to elaborate?

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Well that video demonstrates the germination of the first seeds of this research.

Also check out Brian Curless et all's research into image synthesis:
http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/interior/
http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/parallax/

Essentially what I see the future of film making becoming is use inexpensive (by then inexpensive will still be 8x better than RED) cameras which focus not on image quality so much as 'scene capture'. It'll be like motion capture but of the actual scene itself. Big productions will have more coverage than small productions. An indie shoot might be with 2 cameras. But even with those 2 cameras you'll be able to not only stabilize the shot but completely move the camera or relight the scene in post.

Don't bother with big generators. Don't bother with steadicam. Don't bother cranes. Let the software synthesize a view based on what you captured on set wherever you want. If you need a big night shot just light the parts that are changing (the actors) and then use some big flash bulbs to capture the environment. You can now extract the actor's from their background automatically and use a synthesized background from the flash photography.

If you're a huge production and have lots of cameras all around the scene you'll be able to put a synthesized camera anywhere in the scene. And it'll be seamless.

Focus on the performance. Focus on the environment as much as is necessary and then get off the set and move on. You'll be able to do moderate set adjustments as easily as selecting an object and dragging it around on set later, but you'll still need to block out your shots. It'll just be the big expensive stuff such as getting perfect focus on a take or the technocrane. No more rebalancing the steadicam.

The 'framing' cameras won't be very concerned with image quality, they'll be almost like props. They'll just be guides as well as extremely high speed, lower resolution, low sensitivity motion capture devices. They might even be infrared.

Dollies will be dead. Why bother leveling and laying out board when someone holding a DV sized camera can just walk along side the actors haphazardly? Not all this will happen in 5 years but I think we'll start seeing most of that in FX shots. From there it'll pretty rapidly spread out as the research improves into the mainstream. The first people who will first use this will probably actually be indies since they can't afford anyother way and would be willing to sacrifice inconvenience in the first few years for the improvement in production value for almost no money.

 

[JanneJansson]

Just did a HUGE crane move without a crane. Just a big ass aluminum beam, some weights and RED hanging in straps. All stabilized and made silk smooth afterward. In this case, it was just faster and allot less cost, then renting, transporting, building a big crane.