New stabilization tool for post

[Christoffer Glans]

Has anyone seen this?
http://steadxp.com/

I'm testing post stabilization quite a bit and there's quite a few ways to get a handheld shot to look like it was shot on a steadycam, but the process is almost always time consuming and you need to 3D-track the camera really good to be able to perform a good post-stabilization. Now this tool, if I understand it, uses the same tech as a gimbal but in a little box to record the camera movements in order to generate a stabilization file that you apply to the footage in post. The only thing you need to think about during shooting is that the more movement you have, the shorter shutter speed you need. As long as you don't move around the camera too much you will be safe in post.

The wonderful part of this would be that if you shoot at 6K with around 20% cropped framing you might be able to stabilize your shot without loosing any composition due to the zooming of the post-stabilization. You will also be free of "wobble"-artifacts which occurs during traditional post tracking stabilization.

Then, if it were to record the movement of the camera it might also be great for VFX to have a true camera movement instead of trying to figure it out using a 3D camera tracking. Depends on the accuracy though.

 

[Adam Rook]

that's a very interesting approach. I would like to see the workflow in action and see, in real time, how much post processing needs to be done in order to get the desired effect. Until then I use After Effects Warp Stabilizer and I get fairly quick results. I've saved a lot of shots using that but it would be nice the have all the camera movement data to use. I think it's brilliant.

 

[Elsie N]

Pretty impressive.

 

[Michael Winokur]

I was hoping RED would build gyro / accelerometer into frame by frame meta data. I think most of whats in this box is already in the Epic.

 

[David Bourla]

It's terrific. The workflow will make or break this. As a plugin to Adobe or FCPX would be great.

 

[Nick Morrison]

This looks super cool.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

that's a very interesting approach. I would like to see the workflow in action and see, in real time, how much post processing needs to be done in order to get the desired effect. Until then I use After Effects Warp Stabilizer and I get fairly quick results. I've saved a lot of shots using that but it would be nice the have all the camera movement data to use. I think it's brilliant.

According to them, you shoot with the box on your camera. It records to a memory card (probably an SD-card) and you take that data into a software that comes with the box and stabilize your shot. I've tried the Syntheyes approach (the same as Fincher uses on his films) and the warp stabilizer but for really shaky shots it's almost impossible to get it nice without getting artifacts like the common "wobble"-effect.
This approach erases the need for a good camera tracking. You can have whatever you want in front of the camera moving without it affecting the tracking for stabilization. Imagine you have someone walking infront of the camera and in one instance they cover your entire frame, then it's impossible to get a good camera track. With this it doesn't rely on the image, but the actual camera movement which would give you a hell of a lot better result and much less destruction to your shot.

 

[Elsie N]

I was hoping RED would build gyro / accelerometer into frame by frame meta data. I think most of whats in this box is already in the Epic.

I've never tried utilizing the stabilization built into Epic X/Dragon because I seldom shoot anything other than locked off.

Has anyone tried the Epic stabilization feature?

 

[Terry VerHaar]

From the sample footage, it look like it works pretty well. I wonder if there are any limits in terms of camera, resolution, fps. etc.?

 

[Adam Rook]

It's terrific. The workflow will make or break this. As a plugin to Adobe or FCPX would be great.

Agreed. Would be amazing if Epic had this built in AND use a plugin-in in FCPX or Premiere. Even if it was in RCX would be really cool.

 

[Maik Müller]

I've never tried utilizing the stabilization built into Epic X/Dragon because I seldom shoot anything other than locked off.

Has anyone tried the Epic stabilization feature?

There is nothing to utilize that precious data.
If i remember correctly the gyro-data gets recorded into each frame for a long time - there is just nothing out there that makes use of it.

That little box thing here looks amazing.

 

[James Falco]

Has anyone seen this?
http://steadxp.com/

I'm testing post stabilization quite a bit and there's quite a few ways to get a handheld shot to look like it was shot on a steadycam, but the process is almost always time consuming and you need to 3D-track the camera really good to be able to perform a good post-stabilization. Now this tool, if I understand it, uses the same tech as a gimbal but in a little box to record the camera movements in order to generate a stabilization file that you apply to the footage in post. The only thing you need to think about during shooting is that the more movement you have, the shorter shutter speed you need. As long as you don't move around the camera too much you will be safe in post.

The wonderful part of this would be that if you shoot at 6K with around 20% cropped framing you might be able to stabilize your shot without loosing any composition due to the zooming of the post-stabilization. You will also be free of "wobble"-artifacts which occurs during traditional post tracking stabilization.

Then, if it were to record the movement of the camera it might also be great for VFX to have a true camera movement instead of trying to figure it out using a 3D camera tracking. Depends on the accuracy though.

Anyone who has done post stabilization would know, one thing you can't fix in post is motion blur.
Thats the holly grail of it.

 

[Björn Benckert]

There is nothing to utilize that precious data.
If i remember correctly the gyro-data gets recorded into each frame for a long time - there is just nothing out there that makes use of it.

That little box thing here looks amazing.

I think the gyro data goes into the red focus reciver together with the lens data and as I understand people are extracting and using that data. But I might be mistaken.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Anyone who has done post stabilization would know, one thing you can't fix in post is motion blur.
Thats the holly grail of it.

With RED cameras motion blur issue can be sorted quite far. As you can shoot 360 deg shutter and high speed and get the motion blur divided up over the shot frames...

For example if you shoot 150fps and your target for playback at 25fps you got 6 times the amount of frames. Then you stabilize that footage and after stabilzation you take... frame 1,2 and 3 and mix them together and ditch frame 4,5,and 6 and then take frame 7,8,9 and mix and ditch 10,11,12 and so on...

The above would give you 25fps with just 1/6 of the motion blur issue you normally would have.

The above might seem to be quite a mess but the process is quite easy to script in nuke or any similar composting program.

 

[James Falco]

With RED cameras motion blur issue can be sorted quite far. As you can shoot 360 deg shutter and high speed and get the motion blur divided up over the shot frames...

For example if you shoot 150fps and your target for playback at 25fps you got 6 times the amount of frames. Then you stabilize that footage and after stabilzation you take... frame 1,2 and 3 and mix them together and ditch frame 4,5,and 6 and then take frame 7,8,9 and mix and ditch 10,11,12 and so on...

The above would give you 25fps with just 1/6 of the motion blur issue you normally would have.

The above might seem to be quite a mess but the process is quite easy to script in nuke or any similar composting program.

This all works in relative study and controlled situations. You can also shoot high shutter and put post motion blur on it.
Its not really a problem if you can plan your shot really well.
Reality is you need to stabile shots mostly when they are done sloppy, not when someone prepped carefully for them to be stabilized in post. ; )

 

[Daniel Reed]

Pretty impressive.

add a motion mount and you're golden

 

[Daniel Reed]

I was hoping RED would build gyro / accelerometer into frame by frame meta data. I think most of whats in this box is already in the Epic.

Yeah, i was just thinking the same thing.

RED Team, this would be super awesome addition.
Most of the time taken for post stabilization is footage analysis .

If we could get that info of camera movement in a way we can apply, fuck maybe even in RCX itself, that would be truly fucking awesome.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

There is nothing to utilize that precious data.
If i remember correctly the gyro-data gets recorded into each frame for a long time - there is just nothing out there that makes use of it.

That little box thing here looks amazing.

Wait, what, there's an actual purpose to the Epic gyro? :smiley:
So why isn't there anything out there that use it?

With RED cameras motion blur issue can be sorted quite far. As you can shoot 360 deg shutter and high speed and get the motion blur divided up over the shot frames...

For example if you shoot 150fps and your target for playback at 25fps you got 6 times the amount of frames. Then you stabilize that footage and after stabilzation you take... frame 1,2 and 3 and mix them together and ditch frame 4,5,and 6 and then take frame 7,8,9 and mix and ditch 10,11,12 and so on...

The above would give you 25fps with just 1/6 of the motion blur issue you normally would have.

The above might seem to be quite a mess but the process is quite easy to script in nuke or any similar composting program.

Why not just shoot at a higher shutter speed (lower angle)? Works for me. If I shoot at around an angle of 100 instead of 180, the motion blur gets sharp enough to not screw up the stabilized shot.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I was thinking; is it possible to export gyro and accelerometer data from an Iphone? Wouldn't it be possible to record that data with the phone mounted on the camera and in some way use that data as a camera track in something like After Effects?
If it were possible then in theory it would mean that you could actually just use your phone to collect data for post stabilization without 3D camera tracking software, just like this device... thoughts?

 

[Joe Kyle]

Anyone who has done post stabilization would know, one thing you can't fix in post is motion blur.
Thats the holly grail of it.

My experience with post stabilization only extends to some casual Warp Stabilizer use, so I'm not totally sure what you mean. Stabilization (at least with this approach, which I assume creates camera tracking data to match with your footage) doesn't require frame interpolation or anything, right? I'm a little lost with the concern over shutter speed, blur, shooting at a high frame rate, etc. Is the fear simply that stabilized footage might look artificial because the "stabilized" camera movement may not match the blur created by "real" camera movement?