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Best Image Stabiliser Software

AndreasOberg

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What are your guys thoughts about the different stabilizes in various software.
So far I tried
- Adobe Warp Stabiliser
- Davinci Stabiliser
- FCPX Stabiliser

Some of my thoughts:
Not surprising the FCPX stabilizer seems to give the least good results, but is very fast to use.
Davinci and Adobes are both very good.I like with Davinci that it tracks points to cleverly. Warp Stabiliser has one feature I miss in Davinci and that is that it can fill in empty holes outside the frame generated by the stabiliser. Otherwise Davinci almost seems to generate more predictable results.

Another recent realisation is that you must color grade and stabilise in the same software if you use any gradients or vinjetting. Otherwise if you add a vinjetting in Davinci and stabilise in FPCX then you will be VERY sorry since the borders will jump around.

Any thoughts?
/Andreas
 
Mocha pro is good but doesn't do any warping. Just translation skew or perspective. I'm very impressed with the warp stabilizer. Fcpx is essentially using shakes smoothcam which was pretty good until the warp stabilizer came along.
 
I bet Reduser. Upload your shaking r3d and I think it will come back steady as a rock. lol.
 
PFClean provides amazing results while Adobe CC Warp Stabiliser is the fastest tool on the market.
 
Warp Stabilizer is my goto plug in almost all shaky situations. One exception is when I get not-so-smooth steadicam shots... applying WS gives you that "wobble" look that's not so nice.

Also, Lock n Load provides a pretty fast solution as well.
 
Warp Stabilizer is my goto plug in almost all shaky situations. One exception is when I get not-so-smooth steadicam shots... applying WS gives you that "wobble" look that's not so nice.

Also, Lock n Load provides a pretty fast solution as well.

The warp stabilizer in Adobe cc can remove tracking points which will help with that.
 
Sometimes the WS in Ppro works fantastic but sometimes this wobble effect is added.

I saw it mentioned, there is a way to work around this effect? How? Are there any tutorials on the subject?

Warp Stabilizer is my goto plug .. One exception is when I get not-so-smooth steadicam shots... applying WS gives you that "wobble" look that's not so nice.
 
Sometimes the WS in Ppro works fantastic but sometimes this wobble effect is added.

I saw it mentioned, there is a way to work around this effect? How? Are there any tutorials on the subject?


Whenever I get the wobble-effect with Warp Stabilizer, my only workaround is to turn off sub-space warp and use position instead. It's not the best solution but it prevents the plugin from stretching/pulling the footage that can result in wobble.
 
I don't get a good result with neither, the artifacts are too great. I usually use my own method in After Effects of 3D tracking and manually stabilize a virtual camera in 3D-space over the footage.

But stabilizing footage is never good if not shot for it. You will always get motion blur artifacts if you get the footage perfectly smooth motion-wise. Try shooting at a higher shutter, instead of 180, set it to like 120 or 100. Then you will get sharper edges on any motion. Stabilizing the footage after that and then adding post motion blur will give the sense of it shot as a smooth motion.
 
But stabilizing footage is never good if not shot for it. You will always get motion blur artifacts if you get the footage perfectly smooth motion-wise. Try shooting at a higher shutter, instead of 180, set it to like 120 or 100. Then you will get sharper edges on any motion. Stabilizing the footage after that and then adding post motion blur will give the sense of it shot as a smooth motion.

Clever to add the post motion blur after, I didn't think of that. Do you do this in After Effects?

I'm a bit reluctant to go to AE or Premiere since I'm editing in FCPX and grading in Davinci. Do you guys have any tips of a good workflow for this? Maybe some round trip similar to Davinci. Export XML from FCPX into AE and then render out each movie individually.
Tested yesterday and got almost perfect result by stabilizing in Davinci and then for some shots adding another pass of stabilizing in FCPX. Took me almost a day for 30 shots though.
/Andreas
 
The DaVinci method is good, I think it's better then the warp stabilizer in AE because of the enormous artifacts WS creates. But if going through AE I think the best way is to do it on the 4K material right away. You CAN open R3D's directly in AE, but I would advice you to render out the shots to be stabilized in log-mode and then do effects on it before grading. This is standard workflow for other VFX work so doing it for stablized shots is nothing strange.

But with resolve 10 there are some new features avalibile that makes the process simlar to the AE process, so check that out. But shooting at high shutter and adding motion blur in post after stabilization is a must if you want a realistic result.
 
Not a huge fan om the warp stabilizer but to me I get better results using it inside ae then in premiere. This was the same in finalcut 7 where I did get better smoothcam inside shake.
 
I agree with Glans the best possible option is a good 3D tracker and sombody that knows what he's doing with that data. Think image projection mapping and a stabilized VR camera that also neutralize lens distortion, vinjetes etc while doing the stab and possibly apply them back to the footage when done etc. Thats how you get miles further than you do with any of the plug and play auto analyzing / stabbing nodes or programs.
 
Mercalli and Deshaker produce the best stabilisations over a variety of situations. Adobe's Warp Stabiliser is solid in most situations but has its limitations.
 
Andreas uppload the problem clip and we can do some comparisons.
a h.264 qt would work for that.
 
Syntheyes.

Andreas, look into the foundry's furnace core for FCP. Great plugins, including motion blur. (And the amazing Kronos)
 
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